
Qass IB£ 

Book_ 

Copyright N°_ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MOUNDS, MONUMENTS, 
AND INSCRIPTIONS; 

ILLUSTRATING BIBLE HISTORY. 



BY MARK B. CHAPMAN, D.D. 

Author cj "Lands of the Orient." 



WITH AX INTRODUCTION BY 

JNO. J. TIGERT, D.D., LL.D., 

Book Editor M. E. Church, South. 



Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex.: 

Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 

Barbee & Smith, Agents. 

1901. 






THE LltRARY Of 

CONGRESS, 
Two Capita Received 

JAN. 4 1902 

COFVMGHT ENTRY 

4>-C^. I b^/Cj Of 

CLASS X XXc MO, 

X 3 3 -i 

copir . b. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1901, 

By Mark B. Chapman, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



LC Control Number 



tmp96 027342 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Dr. Tigert's Introduction vii 

CHAPTER I. 
Introductory. 
Modern Research and Discovery — Herculaneum and Pom- 
peii — The Rosetta Stone — The Ruins of Persepolis — 
Cuneiform Inscriptions — Early Travelers and Discov- 
erers — The Behistun Rock — Claudius James Rich — 
Translation of Persian and Babylonian Inscriptions I 

CHAPTER* II. 
Light on the Earlier Chapters of Genesis. 
Discovery of Nineveh — The Library of Assur-banipal — 
Chaldean Account of the Creation and the Deluge — 
The Great Library at Borsippa — The Sabbath — Tradi- 
tions of a Paradise — Babylonian Picture of the Serpent 
and the Fall of Man r . . . 12 

CHAPTER III. 
The Flood and the Tower of Babel. 
The Flood Tablets— The Story of Berosus— Babylonian 
Account of the Deluge — Difference Between the Baby- 
lonian and the Hebrew Records — New Flood Tablets 
Discovered by Pe"re Scheil— The Tower of Babel— Birs- 
Nimrud 23 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Earliest Civilized Race. 
The Turanians, or Mongols — The Fourth Chapter of Gen- 
esis — The First City — Origin of Music — Metals and 
Tools — The Ancient Accadians — The Semites — The 
Vulture Stele — Ancient Nippur — Ur of the Chaldees — 
Melchizedek 37 

CHAPTER V. 
Babylon and Her People. 
Babylonia, the Cradle of Civilization — Sargon the Elder — 

Oii) 



iv Contents, 

PAGE 

Naram-Sin — Khammurabi — The New Kingdom of As- 
syria — Nabopolassar — Nebuchadrezzar — Nabonidus, the 
Last King of Babylon— Cyrus and His Conquests — The 
Fall of Babylon—The Banking House of Egibi 56 

CHAPTER VI. 
Nineveh and the Assyrians. 
Origin of Nineveh — Discovery of Its Ruins — Shalmaneser 
II.— The Black Obelisk— Adad-Nirari— Tiglath-pileser 
II. — Sargon II. — Capture of Samaria — Sennacherib — 
Assur-banipal (Sardanapalus) — Saracus, the Last As- 
syrian King 74 

CHAPTER VII. 
The History of Jonah. 
Dagon, the Fish God — Nineveh, the "Fish City" — Bero- 
sus — Oannes — Neby-Yunus 93 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Moabite Stone and the Tel-el- Amarna Tablets. 
Discovery of the Moabite Stone — Mesha, King of Moab — 
The Inscription Translated — Oldest Hebrew Literary 
Monument — Philological Value — Tel-el- Amarna Tablets 
— Date of the Exodus — Discovery at Tel-el-Hesy 100 

CHAPTER IX. 
Origin of Egyptian Civilization. 
Physical Features of Egypt — Egyptian Dynasties — Dis- 
covery of the Tomb of Menes — First Egyptian Civil- 
ization — The Earliest Known Jewelry — Aborigines of 
Egypt — Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform In- 
scriptions — Civilization an Inheritance in 

CHAPTER X. 
Egypt in the Time of Joseph. 
Abraham in Egypt — The Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings — Jo- 
seph Sold in Egypt — The Seven Years' Famine — The 
Land of Goshen 1 25 

CHAPTER XI. 

RAMESES II. AND THE OPPRESSION. 

Rameses I., the Founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty — 



Contents. v 

PAGE 

Seti I. — Rameses II. — The City of Pithom — A Sermon 
in Brick — The Mummy of Rameses — Moses — "The 
Travels of the Mohar " 135 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Ten Plagues of Egypt. 
Menephtah I., the Pharaoh of the Exodus— The First 
Egyptian Inscription with the Name "Israel" on It — 
The Nile Turned into Blood— The Frogs— The Lice— 
The Beetles— The Murrain— The Boils— The Storm of 
Darkness — The Locusts — The Great Sand Storm — 
Death of the Firstborn — Passage Through the Red Sea. 146 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Revelations from the Land of the Nile. 
Rameses III. — The Great Harris Papyrus — Shishak, the 
Founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty — Bubastis — 
Mummies of Cats— Pasht, the Cat Goddess— "The Hill 
of the Jews" — The City of Orion — The Habits and Cus- 
toms of the Egyptians — Mention of Aaron „ 165 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Castle of the Jew's Daughter. 
Zedekiah, Last King of Judah— Tell Defeuneh, the Tah- 
panhes of Jeremiah — The Flight of the Jews to Egypt 
— Discovery of "The Castle of the Jew's Daughter'' — 
Nebuchadrezzar's Conquest in Egypt — The " Sacred 
Stone of Scone " 176 

CHAPTER XV. 

Valuable Ancient Manuscripts and Egyptian Papyri. 

The Syriac Gospels Found in the Convent of St. Cath- 
erine on Mount Sinai — "Acts of St. Paul " — "Apology 
for Christianity," by Aristides — The "Teaching of the 
Twelve Apostles " — Epistles of Clement of Rome — First 
Chapter of Matthew — " Sayings of Our Lord" — Book 
of Enoch— Gospel of St. Peter 1S5 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Land of Promise and of Prophecy. 
Unique and Singular — Its Size— Four Longitudinal Belts 
— Its Geographical Position — An Epitome of the World 



vi Contents. 

PAGE 

— Difference Between Palestine and Egj'pt — Now Des- 
olate and Forsaken , 197 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. 
Walls of the Temple Area — The Haram — Solomon's Sta- 
bles — The Chief Corner Stone — Fragments of Pottery — 
An Ancient Signet Stone — The Royal Quarries 207 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Herod's Temple and the Pool of Bethesda. 
The Double Gate of Herod's Temple — Inscriptions on 
Stone Forbidding Foreigners to Enter the Temple — 
Paul's Experience — Pool of Bethesda — A Roman Wom- 
an Healed 219 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Siloam Inscription. 

The Pool of Siloam — References in Isaiah and in the 
Psalms — Discovery of the Inscription by Boys — Trans- 
lation of the Inscription — The Virgin's Fountain — A 
Smaller Tunnel 227 

CHAPTER XX. 
A Lost Empire Recovered. 
The Ilittites Mentioned in No History Save the Scriptures 
— Monuments and Inscriptions Recently Discovered 
Giving Their History — Burckhardt's Discovery — A 
Mighty People— Thothmes III. and his Thirteen Vic- 
tories — Great Victory by Rameses II. — An Epic Poem 
— First Peace Treaty — Ilittites Destroyed by Sargon... 233 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Scriptural Sites. 
Jacob's Well — Capernaum — Stone from Cana of Galilee — 
Tombs of Gadara — Ephesus — Recent Discoveries in 
Crete — Susa 243 

Scripture References 257 

Topical Index 261 



INTRODUCTION. 

The publication of such books as Sayce's 
" Higher Criticism and the Monuments," "Baby- 
lonians and Assyrians," "Early Israel and the 
Surrounding Nations"; Rogers's "History of 
Babylonia and Assyria"; McCurdy's "History, 
Prophecy, and the Monuments " ; Rassam's "As- 
shur and the Land of Nimrod," and others that 
might be mentioned, has familiarized the popular 
mind with the fact that there has been preserved 
a veritable historical record parallel, generally 
speaking, with that contained in the Old Testa- 
ment and serving valuable ends of elucidation and 
verification.' Sayce and Hommel may have some- 
what exaggerated the value of these independent 
historical materials for the refutation of the pre- 
dominantly literary and documentary hypotheses 
of higher criticism. Indeed, historians will find 
higher and more constructive uses for these rec- 
ords unearthed by the pick and the spade than 
those of mere polemics. The data are in hand 
for a positive historical reconstruction of that great 
ancient world of Western Asia of which the life of 
Israel was a part. However the relative political 

(vii) 



viii Introduction* 

or commercial importance of Israel may have suf- 
fered by the uncovering of this wider world, in 
which the Hebrews but seldom played a leading 
part, there is incalculable gain in the securing of 
a correct historical perspective and in the illumina- 
tion and completion of what remains obscure or 
fractional in the Old Testament. What once stood 
alone in that ancient record, moreover, is now 
vouched for by many witnesses, telling of the same 
events from the standpoint of the party of the 
other part, and corroborating, with independent 
freedom, what prophets and historians had set down 
in the sacred books of the Jews. Such are the 
priceless gifts which the science of history is now 
bestowing upon the understanding of the Old 
Testament and upon the origins and early devel- 
opments of revealed religion. 

With commendable diligence Dr. Chapman has 
explored this great new literature of the East, and, 
in simple and attractive form, has presented his 
results in these pages. His work has been brought 
down to date, and probably covers the whole field 
as no other single volume has attempted to do. 
As an introduction to a most engaging and profit- 
able field of study; as a necessary help to the 
proper interpretation of the Old Testament; as an 
account of the materials with which historians do 



Introduction. ix 

their work, Dr. Chapman's useful and timely vol- 
ume may be commended as embodying within 
small compass just the information for which the 
busy but inquisitive minister or teacher of a Bible 
class is in search. The book seems to me to have 
a real mission of usefulness, and I cordially invite 
the attention of all students of the Old Testament 
to the matters here so pleasingly and strikingly 
brought into view. Jno. J. Tigert. 

Nashville, 13 August, 1901, 



MOUNDS, MONUMENTS, 
AND INSCRIPTIONS. 

(xi) 



CHAPTER I. 
Introductory. 

Modern Research and Discovery — Herculaneum and Pompeii 
— The Rosetta Stone — The Ruins of Persepolis — Cuneiform 
Inscriptions — Early Travelers and Discoverers — The Behis- 
tun Rock — Claudius James Rich — Translation of Persian 
and Babylonian Inscriptions. 

This is an age of invention and discovery, and we 
can scarcely keep pace with the rapid march of 
the world. The past nineteenth century has wit- 
nessed the most astounding progress along every 
line of intellectual thought and culture, and the 
world has been practically transformed during the 
last fifty years. But no discoveries have been more 
important and valuable than those which have 
brought to light the histories of the great cities and 
empires of the past, and have uncovered the rec- 
ords of the oldest civilization of the human race. 
When after having lain buried under lava and ashes 
for over eighteen hundred years, Herculaneum and 
Pompeii were uncovered and their treasures un- 
earthed, it was considered a very wonderful dis- 
covery; and there is no more interesting museum 
in the world than that where these relics are kept, 
and where are seen plaster of Paris casts of men 
and women who perished nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago when Vesuvius belched forth that fearful 
torrent of fire. When Dr. Schliemann, shoveling 
awa}' the dust of ages, discovered the site of Troy 

0) 



2 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

and proved that the early history of Greece was 
not a mass of myths and fables, but that Homer's 
"Iliad" was based on facts, the whole world was 
startled. The old walls of Troy now stand again 
on firm foundations, and Agamemnon has come 
up out of the shadowy realms of myth and walks 
again king of men. 

' The most interesting and remarkable of all ar- 
chaeological discoveries, however, have been the 
results of the spade of the explorer and the patient 
skill of the decipherer in the sands of Egypt, in the 
historical valleys of Assyria and Syria, and in the 
deserts of Persia and Arabia, as they have brought 
to light monuments, cylinders, mural inscriptions, 
clay tablets, papyrus rolls, coins, seals, necklaces, 
pottery, and multitudes of other relics. These mon- 
uments and records have awakened into life, as by 
the wand of a magician, the entire history of the 
ancient empires of Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, 
and Egypt, and we see the history of Israel, as con- 
tained in Scripture, standing out against a vast 
background, in the dim perspectives of which we 
see these great nations of antiquity. After stand- 
ing for so many centuries on the far horizon of 
time, silent as the sphinx, to-day they are moving 
toward us, and are raising the finger of silence 
from their long-closed lips, bringing us revelations 
of an old world of which we did not even dream. 
As thrilling as is the recovered history of these 
long-buried Oriental empires, that which is of deep- 
est and most absorbing interest is the fact that many 



Introductory : 3 

of these discoveries are but so many commentaries 
upon the Scriptures, and have done for the older 
records of the Bible what the discoveries of Dr. 
Schliemann have done for the early traditions of 
Greece. A flood of light has been thrown upon 
the history of Israel; many a perplexing and ob- 
scure passage in the Bible has been made clear; 
the heroes and writers of the Old Testament are 
speaking to us once more in living tones ; and we 
have indisputable evidence of the substantial accu- 
racy of the historical statements of the Scriptures. 
The old idea that Israel v/as one of the most an- 
cient nations, and that it was the center and soul of 
the ancient world, has been completely revolution- 
ized. This theory is a mistake similar to the 
Ptolemaic view of the solar system. Instead of Is- 
rael's being the controlling power, it was but one 
of a number of dependent states, of which Baby- 
lonia or Assyria v/as the central sun. Its career 
was but an episode in the history of the northern 
Semites, Babylonia, with its offshoot Assyria, be- 
ing the chief determining factor. To Babylonia is 
due in large measure the formation of the politic- 
al environment of Israel, and its history goes back 
several thousand years before Abraham was born ; 
so that when Israel is compared with Babylonia, 
Assyria, and Egypt, it is a modern history. It was 
sixteen centuries after the first recorded expedition 
from Babylonia to the west that Abraham, him- 
self an emigrant from the banks of the lower Eu- 
phrates, entered the Land of Promise. A thou- 



4 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

sand years later the Hebrews, who were really a 
Chaldean colony, again entered Palestine and be- 
came a nation. Seven centuries are the outside lim- 
it of their residence in Cnaaan as an independent 
people. During the latter half of this period they 
were at the mercy of Assyrians and Babylonians. 
Northern Israel was abolished by the one, southern 
Israel was deported by the other. As we bring to 
light the history of these old empires, Israel may 
be seen in its true external setting. 

The first valuable modern archaeological discov- 
ery was that of the "Rosetta Stone," by a French 
engineer in the trenches of Fort St. Julien, near 
Rosetta, in Egypt, during Napoleon's invasion of 
that country in 1799. ^ n I 8o2 it was brought to 
England, and presented by George III. to the 
British Museum, the English having obtained it by 
treaty when the French evacuated Egypt. It is 
one of the most valued of the many British Muse- 
um treasures, and though it is only a rude block of 
black basalt, it is well called " a priceless jewel" 
by archaeologists and philologists, since it proved 
the key to the hieroglyphic language of Egypt and 
opened the sealed book of Egypt's mighty past. 
The inscription on this stone is written in three 
languages — the hieroglyphic or priest-caste lan- 
guage, the Demotic or common speech of the peo- 
ple, and Greek. Their knowledge of Greek en- 
abled Young and Champollion to decipher and 
translate it, and this began the science of Egyp- 
tology. The inscriptions on the stone pertain to 



Introductory. 5 

a decree in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, by the 
priests of Egypt, assembled at a synod at Memphis. 
The synod was convened on account of Ptolemy's 
remission of taxes and dues owed by the sacerdo- 
tal body. Since this discovery, and especially 
during the last two decades, the temples, pyramids, 
and tombs of Egypt have yielded up countless 
treasures of buried wealth, which have enriched 
the museums and libraries of the world. In 1865 
Professor Lepsius exhumed at Zoan a tablet older 
than the Rosetta Stone, bearing an inscription in 
two languages — Greek and hieroglyphic — which 
afforded fresh information as to the extinct written 
tongue. 

Preceding the discovery of the Rosetta Stone was 
the visit of adventurous travelers to the ruins of the 
old city of Persepolis in Persia. The first Euro- 
pean who ever saw these ruins, so far as is known, 
was a wandering friar called Odoricus, who stopped 
there on his way to Cathay in 1320 A.D. Oth- 
er travelers followed from time to time and gave 
descriptions of the great platforms and terraces 
upon which had been built magnificent palaces 
by Darius and Xerxes, which had perished in 
the conflagration lit by Alexander's own hand, in 
a fit of drunken fury. On the walls of the splen- 
did stone staircases leading to these platforms are 
profuse and exquisite ornaments with trilingual 
cuneiform inscriptions. These inscriptions con- 
stituted the first discovery which had ever been 
made of the ancient languages of Persia, Babylo- 



6 Mounds , Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

nia, and Assyria, since they had become extinct; 
and it is remarkable that this clew to the cuneiform 
inscriptions should have been found at a place so 
far from the land of Mesopotamia. 

In 1 62 1 Pietro della Valle wrote letters describ- 
ing his travels through Turkey, Persia, and India, 
and for the first time there was published in Eu- 
rope a copy of part of the strange inscriptions at 
Persepolis. While some European scholars com- 
pared these characters to arrows, others considered 
them to be wedges, the Latin name for which was 
cunei, and from this was derived the word cimei- 
form. 

In 1765 Karsten Niebuhr visited these ruins, and 
later published a complete and accurate copy of 
the inscriptions. In 1798 Professor Tychsen, of 
the University of Rostock, in Germany, and in 
1802 Frederick Miinter, the Danish academician 
of Copenhagen, began the attempt to decipher 
these texts, and started the work which has yield- 
ed such vast and astounding results. 

The credit is due, however, to Georg Friedrich 
Grotefend, of Hanover, born 1775 A.D., for the 
discovery of the key which has unlocked the se- 
crets of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian liter- 
ature. When a young man he began to study the 
inscriptions from Persepolis, and, following the 
theory that had been adopted by Tychsen and 
Miinter, he determined that the inscriptions which 
accompanied the figures of kings were the names 
and titles of these monarchs. He noticed that the 



Introductory. 7 

inscriptions generally began with three or four 
words, one of which varied, while the others re- 
mained unchanged. He guessed that the first 
word was the name of a king, while the others 
represented the royal title. He found that it was 
probable that certain of the monuments on which 
were these inscriptions had been constructed by 
Darius, and he accordingly gave to the characters 
composing it the values required for spelling "Da- 
rius" in the old Persian form. He thus succeed- 
ed in obtaining conjectural values for six cuneiform 
letters. He continued this process until he pos- 
sessed a small alphabet. He was the first scholar 
who learned to read an ancient Persian word, and 
from his study and research came the wonderful 
power to read Babylonian and Assyrian literature. 
In 1835 Sir Henry Rawlinson, then a young 
British officer, became deeply interested in the 
decipherment of these Persian inscriptions, and 
achieved a great triumph. He took up the work 
where Grotefend had left it, and using the clew of 
the German scholar, he set to work to construct an 
alphabet and interpret the inscriptions. He found 
materials for this work by copying the great in- 
scription which Darius had caused to be engraved 
on the sacred rock of Behistun in commemoration 
of his accession to the throne of Persia. This rock 
is near the caravan route between Bagdad and 
Hamadan, and rises to the height of seventeen 
hundred feet. On the limestone surface of one 
perpendicular face of this rock stands this inscrip- 



8 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

tion, the largest page cf history known, written in 
five extensive columns, in Persian, Median, and 
Babylonian cuneiform characters. It was a tre- 
mendous task to copy the whole text, and it took 
several years to complete the work. But the in- 
scription and the translation were finally published, 
other great scholars assisting in the work. This 
version served as a starting point for the decipher- 
ment of the inscriptions on monuments, cylinders, 
and tablets, and was the key which unlocked the 
records of the prehistoric ages. 

In the meantime, while these Persian inscrip- 
tions were being studied and translated, the ruins 
of Babylon, Nineveh, Ur of the Chaldees, Nippur, 
and other ancient cities of Mesopotamia, were be- 
ing discovered, though it was several centuries be- 
fore their vast treasures were unearthed. While 
the site of Babylon had never been forgotten, there 
was very little known of it, and up to the twelfth 
century dense ignorance settled over its ruins. In 
1160 A.D. the Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, in the 
kingdom of Navarre, in journeying through the 
East visited the Jews of Mosul, and saw across 
the river the great mounds which marked the site 
of Nineveh. He also identified Babylon, and de- 
scribes the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace which 
he saw there. 

The English traveler Eldred visited these same 
great ruins in 1583, and wrote the first description 
which aroused the intense interest of scholars and 
explorers. Archaeologists and scientists began to 



Introductory. g 

investigate these long-deserted sites, but they did 
not make many discoveries, and it was not until 
the close of the seventeenth century that they began 
to dig up those great mounds and discover the long- 
buried history of Babylonia and Assyria. From 
1734 to 181 1, Jean Otter, member of the French 
Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres; Kars- 
ten Niebuhr, whose name is associated with the 
Persepolis inscriptions; M. de Beauchamp, a 
French astronomer and archaeologist; and other 
travelers and scientists, made explorations and 
discoveries which aroused great enthusiasm and 
interest. 

But the first really successful scientific explorer 
was Claudius James Rich, an Englishman, in the 
service of the East India Company, who in 181 1 
began to make a thorough examination of the 
mounds which it was claimed occupied the site of 
Nineveh. He established the identity of the an- 
cient Assyrian city, and carried the first sculptures 
and inscribed stones to the British Museum, which 
formed the basis of the great Assyrian and Baby- 
lonian collection which is now in London. 

These explorations were followed by the era of 
excavation which has continued to the present day, 
the marvelous discoveries increasing with every 
new expedition. Great mounds that had lain un- 
touched for millenniums have been dug up and 
thoroughly examined, and amid the debris of these 
buried and forgotten ruins have been found not 
only the remains of palaces, temples, monuments, 



io Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

and great buildings, but immense libraries, in- 
scribed bricks, vases, tablets, and mural inscrip- 
tions, which have given us the history and chro- 
nology of those ancient and almost unknown peo- 
ple, with their manners and customs, their social 
surroundings and scientific knowledge, and their 
very thoughts and emotions. 

The books of these libraries, of which not less 
than one hundred and sixty thousand are now in 
the various museums of the world, were written on 
imperishable clay, covering almost every subject, 
and showing that literature has flourished in the 
earth for more than six thousand years. These 
books are usually two or three inches long, about 
an inch wide, and a little over half an inch in thick- 
ness. Some, however, are much larger, shaped 
like cylinders, sixteen inches high and about five 
inches in diameter. They were written with great 
care, and contain history, poetry, business and so- 
cial letters, religion, medicine, and general litera- 
ture. Every business tablet is dated, and hence 
we have the correct chronology of those people. 
Great numbers of statuettes, vases, and bricks have 
been found bearing the names, titles, and dates of 
the early kings, which enable us to trace the po- 
litical development of those old countries. 

It was through the arduous labors of Grotefend, 
Rich, Botta, Rawlinson, Layard, Hincks, Oppert, 
and others that these long-lost languages were re- 
covered; and because of the efforts of these men, 
Oriental scholars can now translate the cuneiform 



Introductory. n 

inscriptions as easily and accurately as they can 
Greek or Latin. 

It was not until 1857, however, that this new 
science was proved to be correct. The Council of 
the Royal Asiatic Society determined to subject it 
to a conclusive test. Copies of the annals of Tig- 
lath-pileser I. were sent to Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox, 
Talbot, and Oppert, and they were asked to make 
the translations independently of each other, and 
send them under seal to the secretary of the socie- 
ty. When the translations were opened and ex- 
amined, they were found to be substantially the 
same, and this triumphantly demonstrated the cor- 
rectness of the theory. Since that time the study 
of the cuneiform script of Babylonia and Assyria 
has made wonderful progress, and an ordinary his- 
torical text can now be read with as much accu- 
racy as a page from one of the historical books of 
the Old Testament. Indeed, as Professor Sayce 
says, it can be read with even greater certainty, 
since it presents us with the actual words of the 
original writer; whereas the text of the Old Tes- 
tament has come to us through the hands of suc- 
cessive generations of copyists, who have corrupt- 
ed many passages so as to make them grammat- 
ically unintelligible. 



CHAPTER II. 
Light on the Earlier Chapters of Genesis. 

Discovery of Nineveh — The Library of Assur-banipal — Chal- 
dean Account of the Creation and the Deluge — The Great 
Library at Borsippa — The Sabbath — Traditions of a Paradise 
— Babylonian Picture of the Serpent and the Fall of Man. 

No portion of the Bible has been so persistently 
attacked as that which describes the creation and 
fall of man. The first few chapters of Genesis 
have been the battle ground of the critics, and 
they have brought science, history, archasology, 
evolution, and anthropology to the witness stand 
to disprove the statements of Moses. But their 
witnesses have turned state's evidence, and the 
very testimony with which they sought to impeach 
the sacred record is to-day substantiating it. In 
1853 Hormuzd Rassam discovered at Kuyunjik, 
the site of the long-buried city of Nineveh, the 
great palace of Assur-banipal, commonly known 
by the name of Sardanapalus. In the saloon of 
this palace he found the library of the king, which 
is the largest Assyrian library ever discovered. 
It consisted of inscribed terra cotta tablets of all 
shapes and sizes, the most important of which con- 
tained the Chaldean accounts of the creation and 
deluge. These tablets were written about the 
year B.C. 660, and were copies of much older 
records, some of which have since been found. 
(12) 



Light on the Earlier Chapters of Genesis, 13 

Both duplicates of these tablets and additional 
fragments have been discovered in the older libra- 
ries of Borsippa and Sippara (Sepharvaim), as 
well as portions of a still older legend from the 
ancient priest-city of Kutha. One of the tablets 
in the library of Kutha contains this curious state- 
ment: " On a memorial tablet none wrote, none 
explained, for bodies and produce were not 
brought forth in the earth." This would seem 
to intimate that, according to Chaldean tradition, 
the art of writing went back to the very beginning 
of mankind. 

This Assyrian epic of the creation was written 
on seven tablets, corresponding in number with 
the seven days of the Genesis story, though there 
is no direct identification of these seven columns 
with the seven days of the week. The story be- 
gins with a time when nothing existed but the pri- 
meval ocean, the great abyss. We possess, un- 
fortunately, only portions of it, since many of the 
series of clay tablets on which it was inscribed 
have been lost or injured. While the language of 
this Babylonian account of the creation bears a 
striking resemblance to that in Genesis, the for- 
mer is polytheistic and materialistic, while the lat- 
ter is monotheistic and is told in pure and simple 
language. The Chaldean story is mythological and 
poetic, and very much longer than the Hebrew rec- 
ord. As has been v/ell said, in passing from the 
Babylonian to the biblical account, "we pass, as it 
were, from the 'Iliad' to sober history." In the 



14 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

one, we see the action of deified nature; in the 
other, the will of the one supreme God. But the 
accounts are so similar that they must have come 
from the same source. These are the opening 
lines of the first tablet: 

At that time the heaven above had not jet announced 

Or the earth beneath recorded, a name; 

The unopened deep was their generator, 

Mummu-Tiamat (the Chaos of the Sea) was the mother of them 

all. 
Their waters were embosomed as one, and 
The cornfield was unharvested, the pasture was ungrown. 

The fifth tablet, which is the largest of the 
strictly creation tablets, and is also the most im- 
portant, describes the appointment of the heaven- 
ly bodies, and presents striking agreements with 
the biblical account of the fourth day of creation. 
It begins with the declaration that the Creator 
"made beautiful the stations of the great gods," 
or stars, an expression which is a striking parallel 
to the oft-recurring phrase in Genesis, "And God 
saw that it was good." This inscription follows: 

The constellations he arranged them, the double stars he fixed. 
He ordained the year, he appointed the zodiac signs over it; 
The twelve months of constellations by threes he fixed 
From the day when the year commenced to its close. 
He established the position of the crossing stars and for the sea- 
sons their bounds, 
Not to make fault or error of any kind. 

The next tablet, which describes tne creation of 
animals, is almost entirely destroyed, only a few 
lines remaining. "At that time," it begins, " the 
gods in their assembly created (the living crea- 



Light on the Earlier Chapters of Genesis. 15 

tures). They made beautiful the mighty (ani- 
mals). They made the living beings come forth, 
the cattle of the field, the beast of the field, and 
the creeping thing." It is very unfortunate that 
the lower portion of this tablet is so mutilated, for 
it is the opinion of many Assyriologists that if it 
had been preserved we would probably have found 
in it the Babylonian version of the creation of man. 
On another tablet there is a hymn to Ea, the god 
of creation, in which this passage occurs: *'For 
their redemption did he create mankind, even he, 
the merciful one, with whom is life " ; and in an- 
other fragment are these words: " Mayest thou be 
great, for a noble companion art thou. Let thy 
manhood be increased. With the dominion of all 
the gods I have caused thy hand to be filled." 
This seems a parallel to the declaration in Gene- 
sis, " Let us make man in our own image." 

Another small tablet of very great antiquity, 
supposed to be of Accadian origin, has also been 
found in which occurs this statement: " The wom- 
an from the flank of the man was called." It 
would certainly seem from this striking parallel to 
the Genesis story that the Babylonians also knew 
the story of the creation of woman from the rib of 
the man. 

Most of these creation tablets, duplicates of 
which were first found in the library of Assur- 
banipal, have been found in the great library of 
the University Temple of Nebo, at Borsippa. This 
was one of the oldest of Babylonian libraries, hav- 



16 A founds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

ing certainly been in existence as early as B.C. 
2500. In the light of all these primeval inscrip- 
tions, who can doubt but that the scriptural ac- 
count of the creation and these primeval traditions 
came from a common source, and that they were 
handed down from beyond the flood as an heirloom 
of the antediluvian world ? 

The last of the creation tablets contains an ac- 
count of the institution of the sabbath, which was 
called Sabbatu, and which in the Accadian lan- 
guage meant " a day on which work is unlawful." 
This sacred day was to be observed on the sev- 
enth, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth 
days of the lunar month, and on those days the 
calendar lays down the following injunctions: 
"Flesh cooked on the fire may not be eaten. 
The clothing of the body may not be changed. 
White garments may not be put on. A sacrifice 
may not be offered. The king must not drive in 
his chariot, or issue royal decrees. The augur 
may not mutter in a secret place. Medicine for 
the sickness of the body one must not apply, nor 
may any curse be uttered." These remarkable 
words are also found in one of the calendars : " The 
seventh day is a resting day to Merodach and Zar- 
panit, a holy day, a sabbath." What a striking 
parallel we here find to the declaration of Moses: 
"On the seventh day God finished his work which 
he had made; and he rested on the seventh day 
from all his work which he had made. And God 
blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it: because 



Light on the Earlier Chapters of Genesis. 17 

that in it he rested from all his work which God 
had created and made." (Gen. ii. 2, 3.) 

It is very interesting to notice that the Babylo- 
nians were as strict in their observance of the sab- 
bath as the early Jews, for no work was to be done 
and no fire was to be lighted for the cooking of a 
food. Do we not also find in the command not to 
apply " medicine for the sickness of the body" a 
counterpart to the law of the Pharisees which was 
implied in the question they asked Jesus, "Is it 
lawful to heal on the sabbath day?" (Matt. xii. 

10.) 

The chief difference between the Babylonian 
and Jewish sabbath was that the former was es- 
sentially lunar in its character. The first sabbath 
was the seventh day of a month, whatever might 
be the length of the month that preceded it. Each 
sabbath was dedicated to some particular god, and 
the term frequently used by Babylonian writers 
was that it was " the day of the rest of the heart." 
The nineteenth day of the month was also observed 
as a sabbath, which is found to be another striking 
parallel to the Mosaic law when we recall that the 
nineteenth day of the month is the forty-ninth, or 
seventh week, from the first of the previous month, 
thus making a sabbatical week. (Deut. xvi. 9- 

16.) 

No more important or interesting discovery has 
ever been made than that the sabbath is not a Jew- 
ish institution, but, as is declared in Genesis, it 
goes back to the dawn of human histor}^, and had a 



i8 Mounds i Monuments , and Inscriptions. 

basis in the physical constitution of man. Wher- 
ever, in all the annals of the past, the week exist- 
ed, it was marked by the observance of one day in 
seven as a day of rest. 

All nations have some traditions of a paradise, a 
place of primeval happiness. The most common 
hieroglyphic in Egyptian texts is a pictorial symbol 
of primitive Eden, divided by its fourfold river. 
A writer in the Edinburgh Review says: "The 
Buddhists and Brahmans, who together constitute 
nearly half the population of the world, tell us that 
the decussated figure of the cross, whether in a 
simple or complex form, symbolizes the traditional 
happy abode of their primeval ancestors — the par- 
adise of Eden toward the East, as we find it ex- 
pressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask, what bet- 
ter picture or more significant characters in the 
complicated alphabet of symbolism could have 
been selected for the purpose than a circle or a 
cross? — the one to denote a reign of absolute puri- 
ty or perpetual felicity, the other those four peren- 
nial streams that divided and watered the several 
quarters of it." 

These same ideas are in the most ancient eth- 
nic thought — in the Egyptian, Accadian, Assyrian, 
Indian, Persian, Greek, Chinese, and Japanese: 
the idea of a beautiful garden, with rivers flowing 
from it, the abode of the gods and of the ancestors 
of the race. 

Hindoo legends tell of a garden in the East, on 
the summit of a mountain of jacinth, inaccessible 



Light on the Earlier Chaffers of Genesis. 19 

to man; a garden of rich soil and equable tem- 
perature, well watered, and abounding with trees 
and flowers of rare colors and fragrance. In the 
center of Jambu-Dwipa, the middle of the seven 
continents of the Puranas, is the golden mountain 
Meru, which stands like the seed-cup of the lotus 
of the earth. On its summit is the vast city of 
Brahma, renowned in heaven, and encircled by the 
Ganges, which, issuing from the foot of Vishnu, 
washes the lunar orb, and, falling thither from the 
skies, is divided into four streams that flow to the 
four corners of the earth. In this abode of divin- 
ity is the Jambu tree, from whose fruit are fed the 
waters of the Jambu river, which give life and im- 
mortality to all who drink thereof. 

In an ancient Accadian hymn the goddess Ish- 
tar is addressed as "Queen of the land of the four 
rivers of Erech," which arose in paradise. This 
translation of an inscription found on an old Acca- 
dian tablet is given in "Records of the Past," vol. 
ix. : " In Eridu a dark pine grew. It was planted 
in a holy place. Its crown was crystal white, 
which spread toward the deep vault above. The 
abyss of Hea was its pasturage in Eridu, a canal 
full of waters. Its station was the center of this 
earth. Its shrine was the couch of Mother Zik- 
um. The [roof] of its holy house like a forest 
spread its shade. There were none who entered 
not within it. It was the seat of the might}' Moth- 
er." 

In the second chapter of Genesis we learn that 



20 Jlfounds, Monuments, mid Inscriptions, 

it was in the plain of the Euphrates that the first 
living creatures were created, and it was there that 
the first garden was planted, in the midst of which 
grew the tree of life. We learn from the cunei- 
form records that that plain was called Edinna 
(Eden) in the ancient Accadian tongue, and the 
rivers of Eden are found in the rivers and canals 
of Babylonia. The two great rivers between which 
this plain, or valley, lay were the Tigris and the Eu- 
phrates, the former called by the Accadians id 
Idikla, "the river of Idikla," the biblical Hidde- 
kel. The name Pishon is a Babylonian word 
meaning " canal," and Gihon is probably the Ac- 
cadian Gukhan, the stream on which Babylon 
stood. The word cherub is also of Babylonian 
derivation. The winged monsters, with the body 
of a bull and the head of a man, are sometimes 
found in the Assyrian sculptures on either side of 
the tree of life, and are called kirubu, whence the 
Hebrew kerubim and the English " cherubim." 
They often stood at the entrances of Babylonian 
palaces, and were supposed to prevent the evil 
spirits from entering within. King Esarhaddon, 
speaking of one of his immense palaces, writes: 
"In its gates I placed bulls and colossi, who turn 
themselves against the wicked according to the 
command impressed upon them [by the high 
priests and soothsayers] ; they protect the foot- 
steps, causing peace on the path of the king, their 
creator." Lenormant says that on an Assyrian 
talisman in the collection of M. de Clercq he found 



Light on the Surlier Chapters of Genesis. 21 

the word kirubu in place of the ordinary sedu, or 
"protecting genius." 

In nearly all ancient religions and mythologies 
there is a paradise tree, and the Assyrians, Phoe- 
nicians, Persians, Brahmans, and Buddhists all 
had their sacred tree. The Aryans, as early as in 
the far-off Vedic age, had their world-tree, which 
yielded the gods their soma, the drink which main- 
tains immortality. The same tree appears in the 
earliest Accadian mythology. In ancient Eg}^p- 
tian mythology a similar tree inclosed the sarcoph- 
agus of Osiris, and out of this the king of Byblos 
caused the roof-pillar of his palace to be taken. 
The sacred tree of the Buddhists figures largely 
in their sculpture, and this was the Tree of Wis- 
dom, 

beneath whose leaves 
It was ordained that Truth should come to Buddha. 

The Greeks had their "holy palm" in Delos, 
and their sacred olive on the Acropolis at Athens. 
In the garden of the Plesperides, the tree which 
bore the golden apples was unquestionably the 
tree of paradise; and even the Chinese Tauists 
have a sacred tree in the center of the enchanting 
Garden of the Gods. 

'We find in the Babylonian records distinct traces 
of the story of the serpent and the fall in the gar- 
den. In the British Museum there is an archaic 
Babylonian gem, a seal cylinder, which contains 
the figure of a palm tree, on one side of which 
sits a man, and on the other side a woman, each 



22 Mounds, Monuments^ and Inscriptions. 

reaching out a hand to grasp some of the rich 
fruit which hangs from the branches. Behind 
them is an erect serpent. Surely we have here 
a Babylonian representation of the old story of 
the temptation and fall of man. There are also 
some references in the bilingual (Accadian and 
Assyrian) dictionaries which inform us that the 
Accaclians knew of a "wicked serpent," the "ser- 
pent of night and darkness," which had brought 
about the fall of man. In the mythology of Baby- 
lonia this wicked serpent is represented by the 
great dragon Tiamat, which for myriads of years 
had coiled round the earth like a serpent around 
its eggi and who is represented on the monuments 
as a serpent-limbed woman. 

Boscawen gives this translation of part of the 
inscription on the third creation tablet: 

The great gods, all of them determiners of fate, 

They entered, and, deathlike, the god Sar filled. 

In sin one with the other in compact joins. 

The command was established in the garden of the god. 

The Asnau (fruit) they ate, they broke in two, 

Its stalk they destroyed; 

The sweet juice which injures the body. 

Great is their sin. Themselves they exalted. 

To Merodach, their Redeemer, he appointed their fate. 

We certainly have here the story of the fall, 
while there is an intimation in the last line that the 
evil serpent is to be overthrown by Merodach, who 
will restore the fallen. 



CHAPTER III. 
The Flood and the Tower of Babel. 

The Flood Tablets— The Story of Berosus— Babylonian Ac- 
count of the Deluge — Difference Between the Babylonian 
and the Hebrew Records — New Flood Tablets Discovered 
by Pere Scheil— The Tower of Babel— Birs Nimrud. 

Among the most important and interesting archae- 
ological discoveries ever made was that of the 
famous flood tablets found in 1853 by Hormuzd 
Rassam in the ruins of Assur-banipal's palace at 
Nineveh. In 1872 these tablets were translated 
and published by Mr. George Smith, and they may 
well be called "The Magna Charta of Assyriol- 
ogy." Previous to this we possessed a very short 
Babylonian account of the deluge in the fragments 
of Berosus, an Egyptian priest of the third century 
B.C., who wrote a history of Babylon. The story 
of Berosus is wholly thrown into the background 
by the fuller and more circumstantial account 
found on the Babylonian cuneiform tablets, al- 
though Berosus doubtless derived his account from 
the ancient Chaldean inscriptions. These tablets 
contain an epic poem written in twelve books, ar- 
ranged on an astronomical principle, so that each 
book should correspond to one of the signs of the 
zodiac. The history of the deluge was introduced 
into the eleventh book, which has the sign corre- 
sponding to Aquarius, "the water-bearer." Sisu- 

(•-3) 



24 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions* 

%■ 
thros tells the story of the flood to his grandson, 
Gisdhubar, who had traveled in search of health 
to the shores of the river of death at the mouth of 
the Euphrates. Sisuthros tells him how Ea, the 
god of wisdom, had commanded him to build a 
ship to save him from a deluge that was coming. 
The dimensions of the ship are given as 600 cubits 
in length (1,000 feet), and the width and height 
140 cubits (240 feet), which are wholly out of pro- 
portion, the Noachian ark being 300 cubits (500 
feet), the width 50 cubits (80 feet), and the height 
30 cubits (50 feet). This last is almost in accord- 
ance with the dimensions of some of our modern 
transatlantic steamers, the Kaiser Wilhelm der 
Grosse, built in 1897 for the North German Lloyd 
line, being 648 feet long, 65 feet broad, and 43 
feet deep. In the tablet Sisuthros says that Ea 
"opened his mouth and spake to me, his servant, 
* If they laugh at thee, thou shalt say to them, 
Every one who has turned from me shall be pun- 
ished, for the protection of the gods is over me. I 
will judge my judgment upon all above and below. 
Close not the ship until the season, when I shall 
send thee word (saying), Enter the ship and close 
the door. In the interior of it thy grain, thy fur- 
niture, thy goods, thy wealth, thy manservants and 
maidservants, and thy young men, the cattle of 
the field and the animals of the field, as many 
as I would preserve, I will send to thee.' ... I 
searched for cracks, and the wanting parts I fixed. 
Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside. 



The Flood and the Tower of Babel, 25 

Three sari of bitumen I poured over the inside. . . . 
I appointed the portions for each day, and wine I 
gathered like the waters of the river, and food as 
the dust of the earth in receptacles my hand placed. 
With the help of the sun god, the ship was com- 
pleted. All was made strong, and I caused the 
tackling to be carried above and below. Then of 
my possessions I took two-thirds. All I had of 
silver I gathered together. All I had of gold I 
gathered together. All I had of the seed of life I 
gathered together. I brought the whole up into 
the ship. All my menservants and maidservants, 
the cattle of the field and the beast of the field, 
and the young men, all of them, I caused to go 
up." Then follows a highly poetical description 
of the storm, which was so terrible that even the 
gods trembled and sought refuge in the heaven of 
Anu, where they crowded in a heap 'like a dog 
in his kennel,' and gods and goddesses wept for 
pity. It is said: " The darkened earth to waste is 
turned. The surface of the earth like fire the}^ 
sweep. They destroyed all life from the face of 
the earth. To battle against men they brought the 
deluge. Brother saw not brother, men knew not 
one another." ' For six days and nights the storm 
continues, and subsides on the seventh. The sea 
begins to dry. Sisuthros opens the windows and 
sees the corpses floating on the water. On the 
horizon he sees land, and the ship is steered for the 
mountain of Nitsir, which it reaches the second 
day. On the seventh day after this he sends forth 



26 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

a dove, which finds no resting place and returns; 
then a swallow, which does the same; and lastly a 
raven, which feeds on the carrion and does not re- 
turn. The animals are sent forth to the four winds, 
and a sacrifice is offered on an altar which he builds 
on the peak of the mountain. At the close of the 
account of the flood in Genesis, it is said: "And 
God said, This is the token of the covenant which 
I make between me and you, and every living 
creature that is with you, for perpetual generations : 
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a 
token of a covenant between me and the earth. " 
(Gen. ix. 12, 13.) In the closing lines of the 
Chaldean tablet this interesting statement occurs: 
"Thereupon the great goddess at her approach 
lighted up the rainbow which Anu had created ac- 
cording to his glory. . . . He turned himself to us 
and established himself to us in a covenant." 

The striking resemblances between these cunei- 
form tablets and the Hebrew records of this great 
cataclysm are very apparent, and show that they 
both relate to the same event, and that both had 
assumed their present form at a very early date. 
While this epic was written about 660 B.C., there 
are many indications that the flood tablet came 
from a very much more remote period; and even 
in the tablets the commencement of the story is 
carefully lined off from the rest of the inscription. 
The recent discovery of a flood tablet which dates 
back to 2140 B.C., a description of which will be 
given later, corroborates the theory that the story 



The Flood and the Tower of Babel. 27 

of the flood is one of the oldest traditions of the 
race, and as Pere Scheil, the discoverer of the new 
tablet, says, Ci No one can say how many centuries 
one must go back before reaching the historic fact 
which lies at the base of this cycle of legends and 
the first narration made of it." 

The points of agreement between this Babylo- 
nian account of the deluge and that of Genesis are 
exceedingly interesting. Both accounts describe 
the vessel and its construction, though they do not 
agree in the dimensions. In both records it is said 
that the ship was built by divine direction, and was 
divided, according to divinely furnished plans, into 
compartments provided with a door and window, 
pitched within and without with bitumen, and 
roofed over to protect it from the sea. Accord- 
ing to both accounts, the hero and his family, with 
animals needing preservation, were told to enter 
the ark; and they obeyed the divine command and 
entered the vessel. The Bible account refers both 
to rain and to the breaking up of the fountains of 
the great deep as causing the flood. The cunei- 
form inscription also speaks not only of the rain, 
but of the deluge " which had destroyed like an 
earthquake." Other points of resemblance are the 
frequent use of the period of seven days, the closing 
of the door of the ark, the birds sent forth thrice, the 
promise that the earth shall not again be destroyed 
by a flood, the building of an altar and the offering 
of sacrifices upon leaving the ark, and the statement 
in both accounts that the ship was finally stranded 



28 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

on a mountain. The Bible says that the ark rested 
on the mountains of Ararat, while the cuneiform 
tablet gives the name of the mountain as Nitsir, 
about three hundred miles south of Ararat proper, 
near the little Zab river, east of Mesopotamia. 
The most important difference between the Baby- 
lonian and Hebrew records consists in the poly- 
theistic elements in the former, and the monothe- 
istic character of the latter. They differ in details 
concerning the birds, the character of the ship, its 
size, the number of persons that were saved, the 
provisions and treasures that were taken into the 
ship, and the mountain upon which the ark rested. 
There can be no question, in view of the striking 
similarity between them, that these two accounts 
came from a similar source, and that they are sep- 
arate and distinct versions of the same great event. 
This flood tablet has well been called "'a remark- 
able and priceless document," and is a striking 
confirmation of the accuracy of the scriptural nar- 
rative. 

Three years ago Pere Scheil, the French As- 
syriologist, discovered a new flood tablet at Abu- 
habba, the site of the ancient Babylonian city of 
Sippara. The tablet is fragmentary and mutilat- 
ed, measuring twenty-two centimeters in height 
by twenty in breadth, but it is sufficiently large to 
make it certain that the tablet contained the story 
of the deluge. It is the tenth chapter in a story 
which had for its title "While the Man Rested" ; 
and while part of the tablet is in a bad condition, 



The Flood and the Tower of Babel. 29 

it is sufficiently well preserved for us to know that 
we have here " a precious bit of clay on which was 
written a poetical story of the deluge, seven centu- 
ries before Moses, and about the time of Isaac or 
Jacob.' ' Fortunately, the most important part of 
all is preserved : the colophon, with the date. It is 
dated in the reign of Ammi-zaduga, king of Baby- 
lon ; and we know that he reigned about 2140 B.C. 
We thus learn positively that the story of the deluge 
was known throughout the East and was a famil- 
iar tradition centuries before Genesis was written. 
Though only a few lines of this tablet have been 
preserved intact, enough is left to give an outline 
of the history of the deluge. The deluge is named 
under its specific title, abubu. A friendly god also 
there makes his appearance, "who will stretch 
out a helping hand to men." Safety will be se- 
cured, without any possible question, by means of 
a ship; the oar, or ta?'kullu, of which is particu- 
larly mentioned. In the second column the male- 
dictions of a deity are uttered against the human 
race: "That he should kill, that he should de- 
stroy. ... In the morning that he should rain 
down the extermination ; . . . the plain he will 
make its ruin great." Finally, near the close of 
the inscription, there is an allusion to a god, a 
benefactor of the human race, who is to help and 
save. One of the most remarkable expressions 
that appears is that of (i hibls" ("effaced"), which 
shows that the tablet is only a copy of a more an- 
cient original which had suffered injury. For this 



30 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

expression was used by the Chaldean scribes 
whenever the text which they were transcribing was 
mutilated. It is therefore altogether probable that 
some day a still older account of the flood will be 
discovered, reaching back to the old Accadian 
race, four thousand y ears before Christ. 

It is an interesting coincidence that Berosus con- 
nects Sisuthros, the hero of his account of the 
deluge, with the city of Sippara, where Scheil's 
tablet was found. Sisuthros is commanded to bury 
tablets at Sippara, giving an account of the " be- 
ginning, progress, and end of things"; and after 
the deluge Sisuthros returns there for the purpose 
of exhuming the records. 

It is said in Genesis that after the flood men 
journeyed from the east until they came to the 
plain of Shinar, where they built a tower which 
they intended should reach up to heaven. "And 
the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower 
which the children of men builded." To restrain 
them from the work which they had projected, it 
is declared that God confounded their language 
and scattered them over the face of the earth. 
The tower was called Babel, " because the Lord 
did there confound the language of all the earth." 
(Gen. xi. 9.) While there is no positive identifi- 
cation of the tower of Babel, some ruins have 
been discovered at Borsippa, a suburb of Baby- 
lon, which it is not unreasonable to suppose are the 
remains of that great structure. They consist of 
a huge irregular mound crowned by the ruins of a 



The Flood and the Tower of Babel. 31 

tower. The mound rises abruptly from a wide 
desert plain, and the height of the mound and 
tower is one hundred and fifty-three feet. It is 
called Birs-Nimrud, the word Birs being derived 
from the Arabic word Blrij, which signifies a 
tower, the letter j being corrupted into 5. This 
same word is used in all Arabic Bibles, in refer- 
ence to the building of the tower of Babel; so that 
the very name by which it has been called all these 
millenniums, as well as its location, would seem to 
identify it. 

In many respects this is one of the most remark- 
able ruins in the world. All the other monuments 
and towers in that locality were built of either 
burned or unburned bricks, and could fall and 
crumble. But the brick of which this foundation 
and tower were constructed has been vitrified into 
a solid mass, so that one can scarcely discover the 
lines of division between the original bricks. It has 
become one huge and solid stone, like trap rock ; but 
by some other strange convulsion, it would seem, 
it has been split from top to bottom, the two parts 
being perpendicular, and separated in places sev- 
eral feet from each other. These great brick piles 
can be seen for about twenty-five miles around, 
and at the foot of the tower huge vitrified masses 
have fallen, weighing tons, and looking like great 
bowlders. Hormuzd Rassam says that " some of 
these must be between ten and fifteen cubic feet 
square, and the vitrification is so complete through- 
out that when I tried to have a large piece broken 



32 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

to bring to the British Museum, I failed to do so un- 
til I engaged a competent mason, who managed to 
break me two pieces after having blunted half a 
dozen of his iron tools. " 

William Hayes Ward, writing of "A Day in 
Babylon," says: "It is possible that when it was 
constructed it was, for the purpose of solidifying it, 
surrounded with great masses of wood and bitu- 
men, and purposely vitrified. History does not 
tell us, but to the visitor it is one of the most over- 
whelming sights he can experience ; and when he 
considers that he is on the spot which tradition as- 
signs to the tower of Babel, he is able to accept 
any wonder and hardly ask a reason." The de- 
scription of this great mass of vitrified brick calls 
to mind this passage in Genesis xi. 3: "And they 
said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and 
burn them thoroughly [Hebrew, bum them to a 
bu?'ning~\ . And they had brick for stone, and slime 
had they for mortar." 

Nebuchadrezzar attempted to rebuild this tower 
in the sixth century before Christ, and a number of 
bricks have been excavated from the interior of the 
mound which bear in cuneiform characters the 
name of Nebuchadrezzar. In an inscription on 
one of these bricks he tells us that the original 
tower had been erected forty-two generations be- 
fore his times. 

One of the most important discoveries which have 
been made in this mound are the broken fragments 
of a cuneiform inscription which evidently related 



The Flood and the Tower cf Babel. 33 

to the building of the tower of Babel. While these 
tablets are sadly mutilated, so far as they are intelli- 
gible they contain the following : " The thoughts of 
men's hearts were evil, so that the father of the gods 
turned from them. Babylon had corruptly turned 
to sin, and set about building a great tower. Small 
and great mingled at the task, raising the mound. 
This they did in all the day, raising up their strong- 
hold; but in the night the god Anu entirely made 
an end of it. In his anger, also, he poured out 
before the gods his secret counsel to scatter them 
abroad, and set his face against them, and for this 
end gave a command to make strange their speech, 
and thus hinder their progress. Numantir [the 
god of confusion] having gone down, they vio- 
lently resisted him, but he cast them to the earth 
when they would not stop their work. They re- 
volted against the gods, but sorely they wept for 
Babylon, and grieved very much [when their work 
was stopped and they were scattered abroad]." 

It is an interesting fact that the word Babel is 
derived from the Assyrian word Balhel, " to con- 
found" (Gen. xi. 9); and Borsippa, the name of 
the town where this tower was built, means "the 
tower of languages." Moreover, the character 
by which it is represented in the Assyrian tablets 
means, according to Oppert, "the city of the dis- 
persion of the tribes." 

An interesting account of the condition of the 
tower of Babel in the year 355 A.D. was given 
at a recent session of the Paris Academy of In- 
3 



34 Mounds , Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

scriptions. The information was derived from a 
lately discovered Greek manuscript containing the 
description of a Chaldee temple which Harpocra- 
tion visited, and of which he gives accurate meas- 
urements. This temple has been identified with 
the Birs-Nimrud, or the tower of Babel, and is 
the oldest important account we have of it. He 
says there was a very wide substructure, seventy- 
five feet high, the sides being one hundred and 
eighty-four meters. In the middle stood a four- 
cornered tower built of six sections, one upon the 
other, each twenty-eight feet high, and upon the 
top section was a small temple, only fifteen feet 
high. These seven stories together made the 
structure about two hundred and fifty-eight feet 
high. The ascent to the temple was by three hun- 
dred and sixty-five steps, of which three hundred 
were of silver and sixty-five of gold, the number 
to equal the days of the year. The division into 
seven sections corresponded to the days of the 
week. 

We have echoes of this tradition of the tower of 
Babel coming to us from other sources. Eusebius 
gives us this quotation from Abydenus, a Greek 
historian, who lived two hundred years before 
Christ: "The Assyrians relate that the first men 
sprung from the earth, defiant in their strength and 
giant size, and despising the gods, in the belief that 
they themselves were their superiors, undertook to 
build a high tower on the spot where Babylon now 
stands. It had already almost reached heaven, 



The Flood and the Tower of Babel. 35 

when the winds, aiding the gods, threw down the 
huge mass on the heads of the builders; and from 
these ruins Babylon was built. And whereas men, 
till then, had all spoken the same language, hence- 
forth, by the operation of the gods, they spoke in 
different languages.' ' 

Egyptian traditions are also in line with the story 
of the tower of Babel. In the texts of Edfou, 
published by Naville, we learn that they attributed 
the dispersion of nations to a revolt of the wicked. 
" The Egyptians considered all foreigners as 
branches of a great stem of which they them- 
selves were the chief offshoot. They believed, 
moreover, that when mankind dispersed, at a time 
veiled in the twilight of mythology, they already 
knew the metals and writing, could erect great 
buildings, and possessed a'social and religious or- 
ganization.' ' 

Even the ancient Indian races of this continent 
had similar traditions, cut off though they were 
from all the rest of the world. A Mexican manu- 
script in the Vatican library declares that " before 
the great inundation, which took place four thou- 
sand eight hundred years after the creation of the 
world, the country of Anahuac was inhabited by 
giants. All who did not perish in the flood were 
turned into fishes, except seven, who fled into cav- 
erns. When the waters subsided, one of the giants, 
surnamed the Architect, went to Cholula, where, 
as a memorial to the mountain Ilaloe, which had 
served as a refuge to himself and his six brethren, 



2,6 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

he built an artificial hill in the form of a pyramid. 
He ordered bricks to be made at the foot of the 
hills, and placed a file of men who passed them 
from hand to hand. But the gods beheld with 
wrath this building, the top of which was to reach 
the clouds, and, irritated at such an attempt, hurled 
fire on the pyramid. Numbers of the workmen 
perished, the work was discontinued, and the por- 
tion built was dedicated to the god of the air." 
It is said that at the time of the Spanish conquest 
the ruins of this pyramid were still called "the 
mountain of unburned brick. " 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Earliest Civilized Race. 

The Turanians or Mongols — The Fourth Chapter of Genesis — 
The First City— Origin of Music— Metals and Tools— The 
Ancient Accadians — The Semites — The Vulture Stele — An- 
cient Nippur — Ur of the Chaldees — Melchizedek. 

We are accustomed to speak of the Old World as 
containing three continents — Europe, Asia, and Af- 
rica — but modern geologists divide it into two con- 
tinents: Africa, lying between the tropics; and 
Eurasia, including part of Asia and all of Europe, 
tying mostly in the temperate zone. The lead- 
ing ethnologists agree with the Bible account, and 
with ancient traditions, that the first home of 
mankind was somewhere in Eurasia. Dr. A. R. 
Wallace, a strong supporter of Darwin's theory of 
evolution, says, after referring to Darwin's opinion 
as to where the ancestral man originated, "It is 
more probable that he began his existence on the 
open plains or high plateaus of the temperate 
zone," developing "skill as a hunter, trapper, or 
fisherman, and later as a herdman and cultiva- 
tor." Excluding Africa, which Darwin sought to 
make the cradle of the human race, he says: 
"There remains the great Euro- Asiatic continent, 
and its enormous plateaus, extending from Persia 
right across Thibet and Siberia to Manchuria, 
which afford an area some part of which probably 

(37) 



33 Mounds, Monuments , <?/^f Inscriptions. 

offered suitable conditions for the development of 
ancestral man." 

The most generally accepted ethnological theory 
to-day is that the Turanians, or Mongols, were the 
first race of mankind, and for immemorial ages 
they have occupied the great central and north- 
eastern plains of Eurasia. For countless centuries 
they far outnumbered all the rest of the world, 
though now the Caucasian or white race exceeds 
them in population. "One emigration led, after 
several generations, to a settlement in the hot equa- 
torial lowlands of Africa, and thus in course of 
time produced the brown-black negro. Another 
emigration spreading northwest into Europe, the 
moist and cool climate led to a modification of an 
opposite character, so that the ruddy or olive-white 
Caucasian was the result." 

While the originators of this theory had no 
thought of the Bible stor} T , it is in accord with the 
fourth chapter of Genesis, and throws a very strik- 
ing light on that chapter which has been called 
1 ' The Hebrew Legend of Civilization . " It is stated 
that after Cain murdered his brother Abel he 
"went out from the presence of the Lord, and 
dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." 
(Gen. iv. 16.) Until recently, the location of this 
land was an unsolved problem, but it is now iden- 
tified by the aid of the monuments as the district to 
the east of the Tigris, one of the rivers of Eden. 
In the inscriptions, mixed tribes of this district are 
called Zab Manda, or " host of the Manda." The 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 39 

word Manda comes from the root JVadu, " to wan- 
der" ; and who can doubt that this expression orig- 
inated from the declaration of Cain, "I shall be a 
fugitive and a wanderer in the earth"? (R.V.) 
Zabmanda became synonymous with "barbarian 
wanderer," and the land of Nod the " land of wan- 
derers." 

The first record of civilization is found in the 
fourth chapter of Genesis, and the descendants of 
Cain are the earliest civilized race of which we 
have any knowledge, if we accept the Bible record. 
The first city which was ever built was that de- 
scribed in Genesis iv. 17: "Cain builded a city, 
and called the name of the city after the name of 
his son, Enoch." In Genesis x. 10 the city of 
Erech is named as one of the earliest of the cities 
of Nimrod. This was the first capital of the an- 
cient Chaldean empire, and its name was Uru-kt, 
"the city of the land." The Accadian pronun- 
ciation of this was Urug or Uruk, which is almost 
identical with Khanock y or Enoch. Thus the first 
city mentioned in Scripture was the first capital of 
Chaldea. 

The next advance in civilization was the origin 
of music, and it is stated that "Jubal was the father 
of all such as handle the harp and organ" (or 
pipe). (Gen. iv. 21.) It is a striking fact that 
many uncivilized and savage people have a system 
of music and musical instruments before advancing 
along any line of the arts and sciences. 

Among the ruins at Tello, the ancient Shirpurla, 



40 Mounds, Monuments y and Inscriptions. 

"the city of the bright light," in southern Chal- 
dea, M. de Sarzec, the director of the French ex- 
pedition, discovered a very interesting monument, 
whose age was certainly as early as B.C. 3000, 
which represented a harper and a number of 
musicians playing pipes and cymbals. It was 
designed as a memorial of victory, and is a very 
striking illustration of the passage in Genesis iv. 
21. 

After the origin of music came the use of met- 
als and tools. In Genesis iv. 22 it is said that 
Tubal-cain was "the forger of every cutting in- 
strument of brass and iron." (R. V.) The Chal- 
dean monuments, in a very remarkable manner, 
show that the growth of culture in Babylonia cor- 
responded with the outline given in this fourth 
chapter of Genesis. The explorations at Tello 
show that the city was dedicated to Ningirsu, the 
god of fire, and hence was called Shirpurla, " the 
bright light or flame." A hymn to the fire god 
from a tablet in the British Museum shows how 
the fire god was associated with the working of 
metals : 

O Fire God! By thy pure fire 
In the house of darkness thou makest light. 
Thou determinest the destiny of all that is called by name 
Of bronze or lead; thou art the mingler. 
Of silver and gold thou art the purifier; 

Thou art he that turnest away the breast of the evil man at 
night. 

Some very fine specimens of metal work have 
been discovered in the excavations at Tello, and 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 41 

this inscription was found on a large statue of a 
king: " Neither in silver or in copper or in tin or 
in bronze let any one undertake the execution.' ' 
Some of the oldest relics which were found in the 
ruins of this city, dating back at least 4000 B.C., 
were little metal figures, so archaic in their charac- 
ter as to place them at that remote date. 

It is not an unreasonable theory that these de- 
scendants of Cain were the mountaineers known 
as Accadians, the earliest civilized race, who came 
back to their native land, the great alluvial plain 
which lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates. 
After the flood, these pioneers of civilization 
founded great cities, invented the cuneiform sys- 
tem of writing, originated astronomy, mathematics, 
and many of the other arts and sciences, and es- 
tablished libraries in their palaces and temples, in 
which vast numbers of inscribed tablets and cylin- 
ders have been found. The library of Sargon I. 
was found at Sippar, his capital, three thousand 
two hundred years after his death, and many of 
its books on astronomy and astrology were copied 
for general use. A French Assyriologist says: 
"Of all the nations who have bequeathed written 
records of their lives, we may assert that none has 
left monuments more imperishable than Assyria 
and Chaldea. Their number is daily increased by 
new discoveries ; that of the tablets from the Nine- 
veh library alone exceeds ten thousand. If we 
compare these texts with those left us by other na- 
tions, we can easily become convinced that the his- 



42 Mounds, Monuments^ and Inscriptions. 

tory of the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon 
be one of the best known of antiquity.'' 

These ancient Accadians, the first dwellers in 
Mesopotamia, attained to a very high degree of 
art, learning, and culture, and it is entirely reason- 
able to suppose that both the Egyptians and the 
Chinese derived their civilization from them. The 
sundial, the lever, the pulley, the water clock, and 
optical lenses were known to them. It is even 
supposed that they probably had telescopes, as 
there is an apparent reference on some tablets 
to four moons of the planet Jupiter. They had a 
regular astronomical calendar, and divided the 
year into four seasons, twelve lunar months, and 
three hundred and sixty days. They named the 
twelve signs of the zodiac, and divided the equa- 
torial into three hundred and sixty degrees, divid- 
ing each degree into sixty minutes, and each minute 
into sixty seconds. 

One of the chief features of the civilization of 
this ancient people was their social and family re- 
lations. They were a contented, home-dwelling 
people, simple and peaceful in their domestic life, 
and treating the women with kindness and cour- 
tesy. The mother was always represented by a 
sign which meant " the goddess of the house," 
and a wife could own property apart from her hus- 
band. Slaves were also treated justly and kindly, 
and every child was taught to read and write. 
This remarkable civilization, which goes back 
fully six thousand years, forms the groundwork 



The Earliest Civilized Race, 43 

of much of the culture and sociology of the pres- 
ent day. 

The Accadians were Turanians, or Mongols, as 
is shown by their language in the inscriptions, 
their features in many sculptures, and their art and 
religion. The Semites, who were the descendants 
of Shem, the son of Noah, embraced tribes who 
had settled in Arabia and Syria. About 4000 B.C. 
some of these tribes began to settle in Chaldea, 
and became part of the population of the Eu- 
phrato-Tigris valley. In the course of time they 
were amalgamated with the Accadians, and, adopt- 
ing their religion, letters, and literature, became 
an integral'part of the nation, and combined with 
them in building up the great kingdoms of Chaldea 
and Babylonia. 

Previous to this amalgamation, however, there 
were two kingdoms in the Chaldean plain, the 
most ancient of which we have any record, one 
being the Accadian or Sumerian kingdom of Sir- 
gulla, or Shirpurla, called Lagash in the later Bab- 
ylonian literature, and the other the Semitic king- 
dom of Uruk (Erech). The territory of these 
kingdoms was divided by a canal running from 
north to south (the modern Shatt-el-Hai), which 
united the Tigris and the Euphrates. This latter 
kingdom was also called S/mmir, the flat country 
in the south, which is the " Shinar" of the book 
of Genesis. Among the oldest Babylonian in- 
scriptions which have been found are those that 
relate to king Urukagina, who was ruler of Sir- 



44 Mounds i Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

gulla 4500 B.C., and one other of twenty-two lines 
found on a vase, and which Professor Hilprecht 
dates in the fifth millennium before Christ. One of 
the early successors of Urukagina was Eaunatum, 
who styles himself -patcsi, or priest-king. In a 
bloody battle with the Semites he achieved a great 
victory, and when he returned he set up in the 
temple of his god Nin-Sungir a splendid monu- 
ment in commemoration of his triumph. Recently 
this monument, called the "Vulture Stele," was dis- 
covered at Tello, the ancient Shirpurla, and is the 
earliest piece of old Babylonian sculpture which 
has ever been found. It is now in the Louvre, 
at Paris, and received its name from a flock of 
vultures pictured on it, which carry away the arms, 
legs, and decapitated heads of the conquered foes. 
The monument consists of " close-grained, white 
limestone, rounded at the top, and covered with 
scenes and inscriptions on both its faces." On 
one side of the stele stands Eaunatum upright in 
his war chariot, with a great spear in his hand, 
followed by his troops, and charging upon the en- 
emy — the plain is covered with the bodies of his 
enemies ; and on another side stand two goddesses, 
before whom lies a great heap of weapons and of 
booty taken from the Semites. Above them is a 
double-headed eagle standing upon two demi-lions 
placed back to back, which represents the coat of 
arms of the city. While this monument is greatly 
mutilated, scholars have been able to interpret by 
the inscriptions and pictures detailed accounts of 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 45 

Eannatum's great victory over the cities of Gish- 
ban (Harran), Kis, Sabban, and Az, and the de- 
liverance from the north Babylonish Semites. 

The recent explorations among the ruins of 
Nippur, sometimes called Sippar, which the old 
Sumerian legends of the creation declared to be 
one of the oldest cities of the earth, and which 
were begun by the American expedition in 1888, 
have resulted in very interesting and important 
discoveries. In Genesis x. 10 it is said of Nim- 
rod, "the mighty hunter before the Lord," that 
"the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and 
Erech, and Accad, and Calneh." There is a tra- 
dition in the Talmud that Calneh was Nippur, and 
Professor Hilprecht, the leader of the Babylonian 
expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, says 
that recent discoveries have confirmed the truth of 
this tradition. 

Nippur stood at the spot where the Tigris and 
Euphrates tended to approach one another, and 
northward, in the narrowest part of the territory 
which lay between them, were the important cities 
of Babel, or Babylon, Kutha, and Sippara. For 
many centuries Nippur played an important part 
in the history of Babylonian religion, and was the 
seat of government in the early Accadian days, 
being the capital of the first Semitic empire of 
which we have any knowledge, Sargon being the 
first historical king. Naram-Sin succeeded his 
father Sargon, and under their palaces has been 
found an arch of brick, in splendid preservation, 



46 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

which settles the discussion among the historians 
of architecture regarding the antiquity of the arch, 
it being thus proved to have existed four thousand 
years before Christ. 

Among the ruins of Nippur was found the 
library of Sargon, whose reign is proved by in- 
scriptions in bricks, cylinders, and vases to have 
been 3800 B.C. From the vast number of cunei- 
form tablets which have been found, one of the 
earliest chapters in human history has been re- 
stored. The age of Sargon is also substantiated 
by an inscription left on a tablet by Nabonidus, the 
last king of Babylon, in 550 B.C., in which he 
states that when excavating at Nippur to rebuild 
the great Sun temple, he found the cuneiform cyl- 
inder left by Sargon when laying the foundations 
of the first temple three thousand two hundred 
years previously. A statue of Sargon has been 
found on which a remarkable inscription states 
that, when an infant, his mother placed him in a 
basket of rushes, and, after closing the door of his 
ark with bitumen, launched him on the Euphrates, 
whence soon after he was rescued by a water car- 
rier, who brought him up as his own child. He 
was afterwards, he says, chosen leader of a band 
in the mountains, and in due time became king. 

In the upper strata of these ruins several hun- 
dred clay bowls and vases have been found, closely 
inscribed in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Mandean, 
showing that a considerable number of the Jewish 
exiles were settled in and around Nippur, as long 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 47 

as the city existed. A number of the Jewish 
names on these vases are identical with those 
found in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which 
confirms the historical accuracy of" many of the 
statements of these authors. (i The river Kebar 
in the land of the Chaldeans,' ' by the waters of 
which Ezekiel, while a captive among his people 
at Tel-adib, saw the visions of the cherubim 
(Ezek. i. 1-13; iii. 15; x. 15), has been identified 
by these recent discoveries with the Kabari, a large 
canal not far from Nippur. 

The latest expedition was begun in 1898, and 
completed near the close of 1900. The most in- 
teresting discovery made in this last campaign is 
that of the great Temple Library, whose priceless 
tablets antedate all documents and inscriptions 
which have ever been found. Nearly ninety thou- 
sand documents have been taken from the rooms 
and shelves of this library, all of them bearing a 
date between 4000 and 5000 B.C. The invaluable 
information contained in these tablets has not yet 
been published, but Professor Hilprecht declares 
that they will have " an important bearing upon the 
topography and history of ancient Nippur, and 
upon the religious ideas and the customs of the 
daily life of the Babylonian people. " He says 
that " in view of the leading role which Nippur 
played as a religious and political center in early 
Babylonia, before it was succeeded by Babylon as 
the metropolis of the country, it goes without say- 
ing that the historical data we have found, and the 



48 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

many new facts we have determined, will materi- 
ally affect our knowledge of all Babylonia, and 
of the highly civilized conditions which obtained 
at 4000 B.C., and for many ages previously. " 

Naram-Sin proclaimed himself "king of the four 
quarters of the world,' ' followed the conquests of 
his father, and Palestine being already secured, he 
marched into what was called the land of Magan, 
which has been identified with Arabia. A record 
of this conquest was found engraved on an alabas- 
ter vase, discovered by the French expedition to 
Babylonia. Thus Babylonian conquerors found 
their way to Palestine in the gray dawn of history, 
and there was nothing strange in the fact that 
Abraham and his family should have gone from 
Chaldea to the land of Canaan, since his migration 
was sixteen centuries after the first recorded expe- 
dition from Babylonia to the west. The truth is 
that the career of Israel was but an episode in the 
history of the northern Semites, of which Babylo- 
nia, with its offshoot, Assyria, was the chief deter- 
mining factor. The entire Mediterranean coast 
line was, for many centuries, under the control of 
the Tigris and Euphrates. We can now see how 
natural and reasonable was the simple incident 
which was formerly so severely criticised, of " a 
goodly Babylonish garment" being found among 
the spoils of Jericho, when the Israelites entered 
the promised land. 

At Warka, the site of the old city of Erech, 
there has been found a brick taken from the ruins 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 49 

of a temple erected to a goddess, Beltis, by one of 
the earliest kings. It bears this inscription: "Bel- 
tis his lady has caused Unikh the pious chief, king 
of Erech and king of the land of the Akkad, to 
build a temple to her." 

The second capital of this southern kingdom 
was Ur. Until a comparatively recent time, noth- 
ing was known of Ur save the statement in the 
Scripture that Abraham came from Ur of the Chal- 
dees, and the site of the city had been completely 
lost. It has not only been located, however, but 
extensive excavations have been made on its site, 
and the Accadian inscriptions on its bricks, which 
record its foundations, are among the earliest that 
we possess. The names have been catalogued of 
half a dozen of its kings, one of whom was Ched- 
ormabug, father of the Arioch of the Bible (Gen. 
xiv. 1). Two seals, worn by gentlemen of Ur long 
before the time of Abraham, and bearing the 
names of two early kings, are in the British Mu- 
seum. The chief temple of Ur, the ruins of which 
still remain, was dedicated to the moon god, Nan- 
nar, who had precedence in the Babylonian my- 
thology, and it was built by Ur-Ban, who ruled 
about the thirtieth century B.C. An inscription on 
one of the bricks of this temple says: " To Nan- 
nar, eldest son of Bel his king, Ur-Ban, the pow- 
erful man, lord of Erech, king of Ur, king of Su- 
mir and Accad, E-te-im-ila, his beloved Temple, 
he has built, he has restored its site." 

On some other ancient bricks (date 2500 B.C.) 
4 



50 Mozmds, Monuments^ end Inscriptions. 

found in the ruins of this temple there is a litany 
with these words, which have a striking resem- 
blance in tone to some of the Hebrew psalms: 

In Heaven who is supreme? 

Thou alone art supreme. 

On earth who is supreme? 

Thou alone art supreme. 

The word is proclaimed in Heaven, 

And the angels bow their faces down. 

This inscription, which is purely monotheistic, has 
also been translated : " Long-suffering Father, full 
of forgiveness, whose hand upholds the lives of 
mankind: Lord, thy deity is as the wide heavens, 
and fills the sea with fear." When we remember 
that these hymns were written in the old home of 
Abraham seven hundred years before the "Father 
of the Faithful" was born, and more than eight 
hundred years before Genesis was written, they 
have a peculiar significance, and confirm the dec- 
laration of Max Miiller that "monotheism lies im- 
bedded in the heart of polytheism." 

In the time of Abraham, Ur not only commanded 
the great rivers which were the highways of com- 
merce, but was an important seaport, situated on 
the Persian Gulf, and was one of the great marts of 
the ancient world. It is now called Mugheir, the 
" place of bitumen," and is one hundred and fifty 
miles up the Euphrates. " In the centuries that 
have gone by, the river course has changed, and 
by the silting up of the end of the Persian Gulf 
the boundary between sea and land advances sea- 
ward year by year." In describing the increase 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 51 

of land at the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates, 
Loftus says: "Since the commencement of our 
era there has been an increment at the extraordi-: 
nary rate of a mile in about seventy years, which 
far exceeds the growth of any existing delta. This 
rapid increase is accounted for by the deposit of 
the river mud in the confined basin of the gulf, 
where, instead of being washed away by currents, 
as in an open ocean, it is driven back by the re- 
turning tide." 

The Scripture tells us that " Terah took Abram 
his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, 
and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's 
wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of 
the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and 
they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." (Gen. 
xi. 31.) We learn from the cuneiform inscrip- 
tions that Haran was the frontier town of the 
Chaldean kingdom of that age, and that it com- 
manded both the highway into the west and the 
fords of the Euphrates. The name Haran is an 
Accadian word meaning "the road," and the 
deity to whom is was dedicated was the moon god 
of Ur. Abraham's original name Abram, or Abu- 
ramu, is found on early Babylonian contract tab- 
lets, and the name Sarah is the Assyrian Sarrat, 
" queen," while Milcah, the daughter of Haran, is 
the Assyrian Milcat, " princess." 

The campaign of Chedorlaomer and his allies, 
Amraphel, Arioch, and Tidal, recorded in the 
fourteenth chapter of Genesis, has long been con- 



52 Mounds, Monuments i and Inscriptions. 

demned as unhistorical by critics. It is stated in 
Genesis that the tribes in the neighborhood of the 
Dead Sea had served Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, 
for twelve years, and then they rebelled, and that 
Chedorlaomer and his three coworkers marched 
against the revolters, defeating them and carrying 
them away captives. Those who have disputed 
the historical correctness of this account have in- 
sisted that not only was Palestine unknown to the 
Babylonians at that early date, but that an Elamite 
king could not have made a campaign against so 
distant a country as Palestine at that age of the 
world. As has already been shown, nearly two 
thousand years earlier Sargon had marched his ar- 
mies to Syria and Palestine on four separate occa- 
sions, and on the last invasion had erected an 
image of himself on the shore of the Mediterra- 
nean. f An inscription has also been found, written 
by the Assyrian king, Assur-banipal, in which he 
tells us that an image of the goddess Nana had 
been carried away from Babylonia by an Elamite 
king when he overran Chaldea one thousand six 
hundred and thirt}^-flve years before his own time, 
which would make 2280 B.C. This is not far from 
the date of the campaign of Chedorlaomer, and 
Chedorlaomer is an Elamite name. The name 
Arioch, the second one mentioned in the fourteenth 
chapter of Genesis, has been found on an old 
Babylonian tablet, where he was called king of 
Larsa, which is the Babylonian form for the bibli- 
cal Ellasar. Recently discovered Babylonian tab- 



The Earliest Civilized Race, 53 

lets tell us of the wonderful reign of Khammu- 
rabi, the king who united the kingdoms of Shumir 
and Accad, and who was the founder of the new 
monarchy of Babylonia, the city of Babylon being 
in the -plain of Shinar. Professor Hommel, of 
Munich, found that this king's name was spelled 
Hammurapatu in an Assyrian dictionary, which 
is a Babylonian form of Amraphel. So that we 
probably here have the name of "Amraphel, 
king of Shinar." The date of the reign of 
Khammurabi is also in accord with that of Ched- 
orlaomer's campaign. But the most remarkable 
discovery was that made very recently by Mr. 
Pinches, of the British Museum, who found a badly 
broken tablet of Khammurabi, describing the wars 
by which he attained supremacy in Babylonia. In 
this tablet, the names of Arioch and Tidal and 
Chedorlaomer are all mentioned, and what hyper- 
critical scholars have considered a romance is thus 
proved to be a statement of sober facts. 

Another exceedingly interesting confirmation of 
this fourteenth chapter of Genesis is in one of the 
tablets found in the great library at Tel-el-Amarna. 
Melchizedek has been considered a mythical char- 
acter by many critics, and his double title of priest 
and king has been declared to be wholly legend- 
ary. But in this Tel-el-Amarna tablet there is a 
letter from one Ebed Tob, a vassal king of Jerusa- 
lem, to the Egyptian Pharaoh, in which he asks spe- 
cial consideration because he has been appointed 
to the office, not by Pharaoh, but by " the power 



54 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

of the great king," whose temple was on Mount 
Moriah. It is stated that it was not from "his 
father or from his mother" that he inherited his 
dignity. He was king of Jerusalem because he was 
the priest of its god. This case is parallel with that 
of Melchizedek (Heb. vii. 1-3), who was declared 
to be " without father, without mother, without de- 
scent." But what is still more remarkable, the 
name Melchizedek has actually been found on one 
of these Tel-el-Amarna tablets. So that this ' ' king 
of Salem, priest of the most high God," has come 
back from the shadowy land of myths, and again 
receives the tithes of Abraham. 

We also learn from these same tablets the antiq- 
uity and meaning of the word ''Jerusalem " itself. 
ObedTob is declared to be king of " Uru-'Salim," 
which means " the city of the god 'Salim." It was 
the seat of the worship and oracle of the god 
'Salim, whose temple stood on " the mountain" of 
Moriah. 'Salim is the Hebrew Shalom, and de- 
noted "the god of peace." Hence Melchize- 
dek, " king of Salem, and priest of the most high 
God," was not the only occupant of that high 
position, but one in a succession of priest-kings, 
which continued to the times before the conquest. 

At Sippara, one of the earliest capitals of Accad — 
the higher land in the north — now known as Abu- 
Habba, among the many cylinders, vases, statuary, 
weights, tablets, and other objects found in a 
Turkish expedition in 1894, was a small, round 
tablet, whose date is fixed at about 2210 B.C., 



The Earliest Civilized Race. 55 

containing three lines written in the ancient sacred 
Summerian language of that country. This is the 
translation of these lines: " Whosoever has distin- 
guished himself at the place of tablet-writing [that 
is, at the school or university of the Babylonians] 
shall shine as the light." Is not this a remarkable 
parallel to Daniel xii. 3, " They that be wise shall 
shine as the brightness of the firmament " ? 



CHAPTER V. 
Babylon and Her People. 

Babylonia, the Cradle of Civilization — Sargon the Elder — Na- 
ram-Sin — Khammurabi — The New Kingdom of Assyria — 
Nabopolassar — Nebuchadrezzar — Nabonidus, the Last King 
of Babylon — Cyrus and His Conquests — The Fall of Babylon 
— The Banking House of Egibi. 

While to many minds Babylonia and Assyria are 
nearly synonymous terms, they are in fact quite 
distinct, both geographically and historically. 
Babylonia is the plain which lies between the 
lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, and 
was made up of alluvial soil by these two rivers. 
During the entire modern historic period, this re- 
gion has been a scene of desolation and waste, 
though for many centuries it was the most impor- 
tant center of wealth and population. Assyria lay 
to the north and east of this plain, quite one-half 
of its area being mountainous. Babylonia is the 
cradle of the earliest civilization of the race, and 
had a history reaching back for two thousand 
years when Assyria was in its infancy. Babylo- 
nia inherited the language and culture of the Ac- 
cadians, and from her "land of Shinar " went 
forth Asshur to found the Assyrian kingdom (Gen. 
x. n). It was an offshoot of the Semitic part of 
the Babylonian population, and the colony took 
with them the religion, literature, art, and science 

(5«) 



Babylon and Her People. 57 

of the mother country. Up to the last the Assyr- 
ians continued to represent much more strikingly 
than the Babylonians the appearance and charac- 
ter of the pure Semitic t}^pe. The faces which 
are still to be seen on their monuments resemble 
the countenances of the Jews whom we meet in all 
our great cities. 

The first Bab}donian king who has left us ma- 
terial evidence of his existence is Shargina-Shar- 
rukin (Sargon the elder), 3800 B.C. His first ti- 
tle is " Shargani-Sharali, king of Agade." His 
name has been found in the ruins of Sippara. Na- 
bonidus called him "king of Babylon," and the 
chronological lists mention his palace in that city. 
At first his possessions were confined to the city 
of Agade, but he soon succeeded in annexing 
Babylon, Sippara, Kishu, and Nippur, and ob- 
tained the reputation of a formidable conqueror. 
He erected a palace in Babylon which afterwards 
became a royal burying place. Recently several 
inscriptions written by Sargon himself have been 
found which bear witness not only to his historical 
existence, but also to his work as a builder. This 
is the translation of one of them: "Shargani- 
Sharali, son of Itti-Bel, the mighty king of Agade 
and of the ... of Bel, builder of Ekur, temple 
of Bel in Nippur." 1 Far down in the mound at 
Nippur have been found the remains of a pave- 
ment consisting of two courses of burned brick, 
most of them being stamped, and a number con- 

1 Professor Hilprecht, in "Old Babylonian Inscriptions." 



58 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

taining the inscription of Shargani-Sharali, who is 
thus shown to have laid down this massive con- 
struction. He was evidently one of the greatest 
builders of the ancient world, as well as a great 
soldier and fighter. "A lonesome figure he is, in 
the dull gray dawn of human history, stalking 
across the scene, bringing other men to reverence 
the name of Ishtar and making his own personality 
dreaded. " 

Sargon was succeeded by his son Naram-Sin 
about 3750 B.C., who styles himself "king of the 
four quarters of the world." He was a great war- 
rior, and that he extended his sway far beyond the 
limits of Babylonia is proved by a recently discov- 
ered inscription, coupled with a portrait of him, 
which was found at Diarbekr in northern Mesopo- 
tamia,' which tells of his victories in that section. 
An alabaster vase has also been found which tells 
us of his conquests in the "land of Magan " 
which appears to have been in Arabia, near the 
peninsula of Sinai. He was also a great builder 
like his father, and brick stamps have been found 
at Nippur bearing this inscription: "Naram-Sin, 
builder of the temple of Bel." He built other tem- 
ples, and laid the foundations and erected the 
enormous outer wall of Nippur, the bricks being 
" dark gray in color, firm in texture, and of regu- 
lar form. In quality they are unsurpassed by the 
work of any later king." These bricks all bear 
the name and title of this great king, whom his 
subjects deified and worshiped as a creator. 



Babylon and Her People, 59 

This inscription was found on one of the temples: 
"The god Naram-Sin, god of Agade, Sharru- 
Ishdagal, the serine, thy servant." Cesnola also 
discovered in Cyprus a seal bearing this inscrip- 
tion: "Apal-Ishtar, son of Ilu-bana, servant of the 
god Naram-Sin." 

After this glimpse of light on these far-off, shad- 
owy kings, darkness once more closes in upon 
those early morning hours of the world's history, 
and conceals from us the majority of the sover- 
eigns who ruled afterwards in Babylon. For more 
than a thousand years we have only faint echoes 
of the kings who fought and reigned and strove 
for the mastery. " The records give us the mere 
dust of history, and here and there an isolated in- 
dividual makes his appearance in the bare state- 
ment of his name, to vanish when w r e attempt to 
lay hold of him," says Maspero. 

About the year 2342 B.C. an Arabian dynasty 
established itself in Babylon, which gave that city 
its first political importance. These aliens soon 
learned to assimilate themselves completely with 
the Babylonians, and the sixth king of this dynasty 
has come down to posterity as one of the greatest 
rulers Babylon ever had. His name was Kham- 
murabi (Semitic, Kimtu-rapaltu, hence Amarpal, 
the Amraphel of Gen. xiv. 1). He defeated Ku- 
dur-Lagamar (Chedorlaomer), king of Elam, who 
had devastated northern Babylonia, as well as 
Eri-Aku of Larsa (Arioch, king of Ellasar, Gen. 
xiv. 1). He thus brought about such complete 



60 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

union between north and south Babylonia that 
from that time onward for fifteen hundred years 
Babylon continued to be the residence of the Bab- 
ylonian monarchs and the political center of the 
empire as well as its metropolis and chief city. It 
also became the scene of a great literary revival. 
The ancient literature of the country was re-edited, 
new authors arose, and the court of Khammurabi 
revived the literary glories of that of Sargon. A 
contract tablet of Khammurabi has been found 
(see pages 52 and 53) in which all these facts are 
stated, and in which are given the names of the four 
kings mentioned in the campaign described in the 
fourteenth chapter of Genesis. 

The Arabian dynasty, which lasted for three 
hundred and sixty-eight years, was followed by 
what was called the Kassite dynasty, which derives 
its name from the ancient designation Kash or 
Cush (Gen. x. 6). This dynasty lasted for nearly 
six hundred years, and while it was in power the 
new kingdom of Assyria became firmly established. 
In the year 1300 B.C. this northern kingdom con- 
quered Babylonia, and for nearly seven hundred 
years there was almost a constant warfare between 
Assyria and Babylon, sometimes one kingdom 
having the ascendency and then another. But in 
625 B.C. the Assyrian empire was broken up, and 
on its ruins Nabopolassar, who was originally one 
of Assur-banipal's generals, reestablished the Bab- 
ylonian empire. We have inscriptions of his in 
which he speaks of building temples at Babel and 



Babylon and Her People, 61 

Sippar, and of constructing a canal at the latter 
city. Nebuchadrezzar the Great succeeded his 
father Nabopolassar in 604 B.C., having previously 
distinguished himself as a commander and general. 
After defeating Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, 
who had overrun Syria and threatened to cross the 
Euphrates, he had subdued Palestine and Phoe- 
nicia. The name of this great king is written in 
the cuneiform inscriptions I\abu-Kudiirri-uzur) 
"O Nebo, defend the crown," so that the form 
Nebuchadrezzar, which is found in the book of 
Jeremiah, is the correct style, Nebuchadnezzar 
being a corruption of it, like Asnapper for Assur- 
banipal. 

Nebuchadrezzar, during his long reign of fort}'- 
four years, made Babylonia the greatest empire 
which the world had known up to that time. This 
great king, about whose name tradition has built up 
almost as dazzling an array of conquests as those of 
Sesostris or of Alexander, conquered not only the 
whole of Mesopotamia, but spread his empire west 
to the Mediterranean, and included Syria, Phoeni- 
cia, Palestine, Palmyra, and Damascus — a great 
territory, measuring nearly fourteen hundred miles 
from east to west. He invaded Syria a second time 
to punish the Tyrians and Jews for revolting; and 
after sacking Jerusalem, tearing down its walls, and 
destroying the temple of Solomon, he sent Zede- 
kiah the king and most of the Hebrew nation into 
Babylonish captivity. His name occurs more than 
one hundred and fifty times in the Old Testament. 



62 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

Nebuchadrezzar made Babylon one of the most 
splendid cities of the ancient world — a metropolis 
of such vast population and wealth that its name 
has become proverbial in all languages. The sto- 
ries of its grandeur, extent, and magnificence sound 
fabulous. It was the paradise of ancient architec- 
ture, and it is said that Nebuchadrezzar employed 
two million men in the rearing of her walls and 
the building of her works. Its palaces, its tem- 
ples, its hanging gardens, and its walls were alike 
on a vast and magnificent scale. The temples 
were roofed with cedars of Lebanon and overlaid 
with gold and silver, that of Belus being four hun- 
dred and eighty feet high, with a shrine of the 
deity on the summit, from whence the whole pan- 
orama of Babylonian glory lay spread below as a 
picture. Herodotus says that the walls of the city 
were fourteen miles in length on each sicfe, or fifty- 
six miles in circumference, and that they were 
eighty-seven feet thick and three hundred and fifty 
feet high. It is very remarkable that no remains 
of these walls have been found, and this fact is a 
striking fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah: 
" Thus saith the Lord of hosts, The broad walls of 
Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates 
shall be burned with fire, and the people shall labor 
in vain." (Jer. li. 58.) 

The river Euphrates ran through the center of 
the city, and on each bank was a quay of the same 
thickness as the walls of the city, with massive 
gates of brass leading to the streets. A great 



Babylon and Her People. 63 

bridge, one thousand yards long and thirty feet 
wide, spanned the river and united the two por- 
tions of the city, and at either extremity of the 
bridge was a magnificent royal palace. Within the 
inclosure of one of these palaces were constructed 
the famous hanging gardens, one of the seven 
wonders of the world. These were built on a se- 
ries of terraces to the height of four hundred feet, 
and upon the summit of each terrace was spread an 
abundance of earth, on which grew flowers, trees, 
and plants, so that the whole had an appearance 
of woods and gardens overhanging mountains. 

On the top of the great walls of the city were 
two hundred and fifty towers. These were ar- 
ranged in pairs on the outer and inner edges of 
the rampart, and so broad was the space that a 
four-horse chariot could be turned between them. 
So vast was the mass of masonry in these walls, 
and so great their height and thickness, that they 
were an impregnable bulwark against any enginery 
of the times. 

Through the magnificent streets of this great 
city, each straight as an arrow and fifteen miles 
in length, swept the chariots of princes and mon- 
archs. Out of her splendid gates poured the 
bronzed cohorts of well-nigh invincible soldiers, 
going forth to conquer. Into these same gates 
were driven the captives from a hundred van- 
quished provinces. Over her palaces and towers 
and temples rose the oriental sun in unclouded 
glory. And as she saw her rivals go down one 



6\ Afo7cnds, Monuments^ and Inscriptions. 

by one before the might of her power, she arro- 
gated to herself the rank and title of mistress of 
the world. 

Many of the inscriptions and records left by 
Nebuchadrezzar have been found, but most of 
them are accounts of his building operations. 
Only a few fragments of the annals of his wars 
and expeditions have been found. There has re- 
cently been discovered a remarkable confirmation 
of a statement made by the Jewish historian Jose- 
phus, who lived in the first century A.D. Speak- 
ing of Nebuchadrezzar, he says "the palace was 
built in fifteen days," which seemed so exaggerat- 
ed a statement that but little attention has been paid 
to it. Decipherers were greatly amazed when, 
a short while ago, on a cylinder of Nebuchad- 
rezzar, now in London, they read these words: 
(i In fifteen days I completed the splendid work." 
"Even supposing all the materials to have been 
brought together, all the art work to have been 
done beforehand, and only placed and put togeth- 
er in this space of time, what a command of hu- 
man labor does not such a statement represent! " 

Daniel gives a striking picture of this king, 
walking upon the terraces of his palace, looking 
at the magnificent buildings around him, and ex- 
claiming, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have 
built for the house of the kingdom, by the might 
of my power, and for the honor of my majes- 
ty?" Expressions remarkably like this have been 
found in inscriptions on his palaces and cylinders: 



Babylon and Her People. 65 

" . . . For the astonishment of men I built this 
house; awe of the power of my majesty encom- 
passes its walls. . . . The temples of the great 
gods I made brilliant as the sun, shining as the day. 
. . . In Babylon alone I raised the seat of my 
dominion, in no other city." 

Three years ago a German expedition, under 
the charge of Dr. Koldewey, began excavations in 
the immense ruins of Babylon, and, to the aston- 
ishment of those who have discredited the state- 
ments of Herodotus, the foundation of the mighty 
wall of that great city has been discovered. The 
wall is one hundred and thirty-six and one-half feet 
wide, built of two retaining walls, one twenty-three 
and one-half and the other forty-four feet thick, 
built of burned brick laid in asphalt, and between 
themafillingof sand and gravel sixty-nine feet thickT 

An entire temple was also found, built by Assur- 
banipal, the last great king of Assyria, and a long 
inscription in honor of that king and his brother, 
whom he placed in command at Babylon. It is 
believed that the ruins of the hanging gardens of 
Nebuchadrezzar will also be found. 

In one of the annals of Nebuchadrezzar there is 
an allusion to his campaign in Egypt, of which 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied. (Jer. xliii. 10, 
11; Ezek. xxix. 19.) References to this cam- 
paign have been found in the Egyptian monu- 
ments, from which we learn that the Babylonian 
army swept the whole of the northern part of 
Egypt, and penetrated as far south as Assouan, 
5 



66 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

from whence they were forced to retreat by the 
Egyptian general, Hor. Amasis was at this time 
king of Egypt, having dethroned and murdered 
Apries, the Pharaoh Hophra of the Bible, whose 
miserable end had been foretold by Jeremiah 
(xliv. 30). 

A few years ago, a long inscription written by 
Nebuchadrezzar was found on a lofty cliff, on the 
northern bank of the Nahr-el-Kelb, or Dog river, 
about eight miles to the north of Beirut. Although 
the inscription is considerably injured by time and 
weather, most of it has been deciphered. Like 
his other annals, he gives no account of his S}'rian 
and Jewish campaigns; but the clearest part of 
the text is occupied with a list of the wines of the 
Lebanon, among which the wine of Helbon, near 
Damascus, was the most highly prized. (See 
Ezck. xxvii. 18.) 

Nebuchadrezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil- 
merodach, who lived only three years after his ac- 
cession, and then was murdered by his brother-in- 
law. It was he who released the unfortunate Je- 
hoiachin of Judah from his prison (2 Kings xxv. 
27), and who gave him such kind treatment dur- 
ing his reign. After several changes, the throne 
was usurped by Nabonidus, who reigned seventeen 
years, and who was the last king of Babylon. He 
witnessed the rise of a new power in the East, the 
empire of Cyrus, regarding whom the cuneiform 
records have given us most interesting and startling 
information. Among these clay documents which 



Babylon and Her P co-file. 67 

have recently been discovered, one is a cylinder, 
inscribed by order of Cyrus; another is a tablet, 
which describes the conquest of Babylonia by Cy- 
rus and the causes which led up to it ; and the third 
is an account given by Nabonidus of his restoration 
of the temple of the moon god at Haran, and of the 
temples of* the sun god and of Anunit at Sephar- 
vaim. By the light of these inscriptions the entire 
history of Cyrus, of the siege and capture of Bab- 
ylon, of Darius, and of many contemporaneous 
events, has been rewritten and presented in an 
entirely new aspect. We learn from these docu- 
ments that Cyrus was originally king of Elam, the 
mountainous country separating Persia from Bab- 
ylonia. After conquering Persia, he made war 
against the great and wealthy empire of Lydia, 
which he finally subdued. He proceeded to ex- 
tend his dominions until all the races which then 
inhabited Afghanistan, the upper val!e}'s of the 
Indus, and even Beloochistan, acknowledged his 
rule. He next undertook the conquest of the 
Babylonian monarchy, and in the year 539 B.C. 
he marched on Babylon from near Bagdad. Cy- 
rus has been called by all historians Sfi king of Per- 
sia" ; but in his annalistic records, as well as in the 
account given by Nabonidus, he is called "king 
of Elam." This is a remarkable testimony to the 
accuracy of the Old Testament records; for in 
Isaiah xxi. 1-10, where the invasion of Babylonia 
is described, there is no mention of Persia, but only 
of Elam and Media. 



68 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

The stories of Herodotus and Xenophon, which 
have always been received up to a very recent date 
as accurate history, represent Cyrus as an orien- 
tal Alexander, who aimed at universal dominion, 
whose reign over Persia made a great epoch in 
history. According to their account, Cyrus be- 
sieged Babylon for two years, and finally captured 
it by a grand couf d'etat, this consisting in turn- 
ing the waters of the river Euphrates, which ran 
through the center of the city, out of their proper 
channel, leaving the bed of the river dry, and en- 
abling him thus to enter and take the city. The 
truth is, however, as the inscriptions of Cyrus and 
other corroborative accounts which have been dis- 
covered and translated show, there was no siege 
and capture of Babylon. Cyrus declares that his 
army, under the command of his general, Gobyras, 
entered Babylon "without fighting," after march- 
ing from Sippara. While the inscriptions do not 
give any details as to the manner of entrance, it is 
probable that the invading army was assisted by 
treachery from within. The theory has been ad- 
vanced that the exiled Jews, who had been in 
Bab}'lonish captivity for forty-eight years, took part 
in the plot against Nabonidus, and assisted in open- 
ing the gates, and that this was one of the reasons 
that induced Cyrus to allow them to return to their 
own land. Three months after the capture of the 
city, Cyrus himself arrived and took possession of 
his new capital. 

The annals cylinder of Cyrus, which tells the 



Babylon and Her People. 69 

story of this capture, is admirably preserved, and 
this is part of the record: "The men of Accad 
broke out into a revolt. The soldiers took Sippar 
on the fourteenth day without fighting. Naboni- 
dus flies. On the sixteenth day Gobyras, the gov- 
ernor of Gutium [Kurdistan], and the army of 
Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting. After- 
wards he takes Nabonidus, and puts him into fet- 
ters in Babylon. . . . On the third day of 
Marchesvan Cj^rus entered Babylon. The streets 
were black before him. He promised peace to 
the city and all within it. . . . On the eleventh 
day of the previous Marchesvan . . . the king 
[Nabonidus] died." 

In the book of Daniel it is stated that when 
Babylon was captured Belshazzar was king, and 
this statement has always been one of the chief 
points of attack on the part of the higher critics, 
as Berosus, the Babylonian historian, as well as 
all the Greek historians, state explicitly that Na- 
bonidus, and not Belshazzar, was the last king of 
Babylon. In fact, Belshazzar's name is not men- 
tioned by any of these historians. Recently, how- 
ever, a great mass of documents has been brought 
to light in which the name of Belshazzar frequently 
occurs as the son of the king, Nabonidus. The first 
of these is a small cylinder, which was found in the 
temple of the moon god at Ur (Mugheir), with a 
very fervent prayer addressed to that god on be- 
half of himself and his son by Nabonidus: "As 
for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, in the full- 



70 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

ness of thy great divinity, grant me length of life, 
to remote days, and for Belshazzar, my firstborn 
son, the desire of my heart. Reverence for thy 
great divinity establish thou in his heart; may he 
not be given to sin ! " This clearly demonstrates 
the historical identity of Belshazzar, and the lan- 
guage indicates that, after a well-known custom of 
both the Babylonian and Egyptian monarchs, he 
was associated with his father in the government 
of the kingdom much in the same way that Esar- 
haddon shared the royal power with his son, As- 
sur-banipal. The promise made to Daniel in Dan- 
iel v. 16, that he should be "the third ruler in the 
kingdom," is now seen to be exactly what might 
be expected if Belshazzar himself was only the 
second ruler, his father, Nabonidus, being the 
first. 

Much light is thrown on the public life of Bel- 
shazzar in the records written by Cyrus himself, 
where the son of Nabonidus is several times men- 
tioned, though not by name. In these documents 
Cyrus says that when he invaded the country and 
attacked Babylon, the king's son was at first in the 
field with the army, and that he held a period of 
mourning at Sippara on the occasion of his grand- 
mother's death. The war continued for some ten 
years, and in the last year Nabonidus took the 
field and fought a disastrous battle with Cyrus, 
while the king's son was at the capital. 

Cyrus delayed his attack upon Babylon till the 
springtime, because every March, when the sun 



Babylon and Her People. *]i 

had reached the solstice, there was a great reli- 
gious festival celebrated by the Babylonians. From 
the cuneiform inscriptions we now know that on 
the fifteenth of the month Tammuz, the night of 
the great religious festival, Cyrus's army entered 
Babylon. We have here a most interesting and 
striking coincidence between the scriptural rec- 
ord and the revelations of the monuments. Bel- 
shazzar and his court, full of contempt for the 
besieging army which they thought could not pos- 
sibly come within the great walls of their city, or- 
dered the whole city to be given over to scenes of 
revelry and debauch. This is the description 
which Daniel gives of the dramatic scene that 
took place in the royal palace: "Belshazzar the 
king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, 
and drank wine before the thousand. . . . They 
brought the golden vessels that were taken out of 
the temple, . . . and the king and his princes, his 
wives and his concubines, drank in them. They 
drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of 
silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. 
In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon 
the plaister of the wall of the king's palace. 
Then the king's countenance was changed, and 
his thoughts troubled him. ... In that night was 
Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain." 

The invading army took advantage of the wild 
and wanton festivity in which not only the king's 
court, but the whole city, was plunged ; and as the 



72 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

gates were opened by those who were in league 
with them, they entered and took possession of 
the great Chaldean capital. The fall of Babylon 
and the death of Belshazzar made Cyrus the con- 
queror of Babylonia and master of all Asia. 

Another exceedingly interesting confirmation of 
the Scripture narrative is an inscription found on 
a clay cylinder, in which Cyrus commands that 
the Baylonian captives shall be returned to their 
several homes. Cyrus did not approve of the old 
Assyrian and Babylonian system of transporting 
conquered nations into the land of their conquer- 
ors, and among those whom he sent back were the 
captive Jev/s — a full description of which we have 
in the first chapter of Ezra. v 

One of the most interesting Babylonian discov- 
eries of recent years consists of about three thou- 
sand tablets, varying in size from about one square 
inch to twelve, which were found in 1874 by some 
Arab diggers in a large mound. They were bought 
by George Smith for the British Museum, and it 
was found on examination that they were docu- 
ments recording all sorts of pecuniary and com- 
mercial transactions, and bearing the names of the 
contracting parties and of the witnesses. Among 
these names, either as principal or witness, more 
often the former, always figured the name of some 
son or grandson or descendant of a certain Egibi, 
evidently the founder of a firm possessed of great 
wealth and influence, and which, through several 
centuries, transacted money affairs of every sort 



Babylon and Her People. 73 

and magnitude, from the loan of a few manehs to 
that of many talents, from the witnesses of a con- 
tract or will to the collecting of taxes from whole 
provinces farmed to the house by the government. 
These tablets are all carefully dated, giving the 
day and month, and the year of the reigning 
king, by which we find that the founder, Egibi, 
was probably at the head of the house in the reign 
of Sennacherib, about 685 B.C., which was some 
seventy-five years after the deportation of the Is- 
raelites of the Northern Kingdom into Babylon. 
Professor Delitzsch says that the name " Egibi" 
is the equivalent of the Hebrew name Yakub 
(Jacob), and that the tablets bear many other un- 
mistakable Jewish names. So that this great bank- 
er must have been a Jew, and this was perhaps the 
first Jewish banking house which was ever estab- 
lished. This was the earliest fulfillment of that 
promise to the Jewish race recorded in Deuteron- 
omy xxviii. 12, and which is being fulfilled to this 
day: "Thou shalt lend unto many nations, and 
thou shalt not borrow." The dates on the tablets 
show that these Babylonian Rothschilds continued 
to be the leading bankers in the East for nearly 
four centuries, some of the tablets being dated 
from the reign of Alexander the Great. As real 
banking operations have always been considered 
the invention of the Jewish financiers of the mid- 
dle ages, it is rather startling to find that they 
were in familiar operation among their ancestors 
or kindred twenty centuries earlier. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Nineveh and the Assyrians. 

Origin of Nineveh — Discovery of Its Ruins — Shalmaneser II. 
—The Black Obelisk— Adad-Nirari— Tiglath-pileser II.— 
Sargon II. — Capture of Samaria — Sennacherib — Assur-bani- 
pal (Sardanapalus) — Saracus, the last Assyrian King. 

Among the great cities of the ancient world, Nine- 
veh contended with Babylon for the palm. As in 
monumental grandeur Assyria stands next to Egypt, 
so in glory and magnificence Nineveh stands sec- 
ond only to Babylon. For many hundreds of years 
she reared her proud head in arrogant splendor, 
her palaces towering above the Tigris and mir- 
rored in its swift waters. Out of her great brazen 
gates marched army after army that made the 
earth tremble, and returned laden with the spoils 
of conquered empires. Along her magnificent 
streets rode her monarchs to the high places of 
sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. 
From her hundreds of towers went up the shouts 
of victor)?- through those early ages, and from her 
great temples arose the smoke from burning vic- 
tims, mingled with the prayers of idolatrous wor- 
shipers and the offerings of princes and nobles. 

The origin of Nineveh antedates all secular his- 
tory; but the Bible tells us it was built by Asshur 
(Gen.x. ii ), from whom the Assyrians, whose cap- 
ital it was, derived their name. Assyria occupied 
(74) 



Nineveh and the Assyrians. 75 

that part of Mesopotamia lying north of Chaldea, 
and was for many centuries one o'f the greatest and 
most powerful empires in the East. Babylonia, 
however, had a long history behind it when the 
kingdom of Assyria first arose, just as the Accads 
or Chaldeans lay many centuries behind Babylo- 
nia. The first Assyrian empire conquered Babylo- 
nia in the thirteenth century B.C. Later, Assyria 
went down, and for many years Babylonia was the 
dominant power. Next arose the second great 
Assyrian empire, which was contemporaneous with 
the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. This latter 
empire immediately preceded the last great Baby- 
lonian empire, and it was out of its ruins that Na- 
bopolassar constructed the latter kingdom. 

The site of Babylon was never lost; but for 
two thousand five hundred years Nineveh, the 
great Ass} T rian capital, lay forgotten in a nameless 
grave. Xenophon's ten thousand and the legions 
of Alexander marched in ignorance over its bur- 
ied treasures, and Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Ptol- 
emy, and other writers and travelers of the early 
centuries, though traversing that territory again 
and again, knew nothing of the site of that ancient 
city. It is not strange, therefore, that until within 
less than sixty years ago the story of the greatness 
and glory of Nineveh was discredited, and some 
of the higher critics even declared that it was 
doubtful if such a city had ever existed. But in 
1841, underneath the accumulations of centuries, 
Nineveh was discovered, and the greatest treasures 



76 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

have been since exhumed that have been brought 
to light in the history of archaeology. Colossal 
sculptures, tens of thousands of cylinders and 
seals, inscribed tablets almost without number, 
gray alabaster slabs sculptured in bas-relief, and 
vast libraries of clay cylinders that make us almost 
cease to regret the loss of the great Alexandrian 
library, have enriched the museums of all lands, 
and revealed a new world of art and literature. 
As interesting as are all these discoveries to archae- 
ologists, they possess a hundred-fold greater inter- 
est to Bible students, confirming, as they do in so 
striking a manner, many of the Bible narratives. 
The history of the later Assyrian kings ran parallel 
with that of Israel and Judah, and a long list might 
be given of biblical names occurring in the Assyr- 
ian inscriptions. They contain references to Hiram, 
king of Tyre; to Ahab; to Jehu, "son of Omri"; 
to Ahaz, to Hoshea, to Hezekiah, to Manasseh; to 
Ben-hadad, king of Damascus ; and to many others 
whose names are familiar to Bible students. In 
fact, almost every event connected with Assyria, 
mentioned in the Bible, is faithfully recorded in 
the historical inscriptions of the Assyrian kings. 
A very interesting fact is that all of these Assyrian 
monarchs kept full records of their reigns, of their 
wars, and of their conquests; and these have been 
preserved on clay tablets, stones, cylinders, etc., 
and now the entire history of those old empires is 
as well known as that of any modern country. 
Assyria had a long and checkered history before 



Nin cv eh and th e A ssyrian s. 77 

the names of the kings of Judah and Israel appear 
in its annals. In 860 B.C. Shalmaneser II. began 
to reign, and during his sway of thirty-five years 
Assyria attained her full growth and highest power. 
He extended his great empire from the sources of 
the Tigris to the coasts of the Mediterranean ; and 
his long reign was a series of military campaigns, 
which numbered no less than twenty-six. In the 
ruins of Shalmaneser's palace, in the center of the 
great Nimrud mound, Layard found a very re- 
markable monument — a pillar in hard black stone, 
about seven feet high — which is now in the Assyr- 
ian hall of the British Museum, and is called "The 
Black Obelisk." The four faces are covered with 
sculpture and writing, which give the records of 
Shalmaneser's wars, written by himself. The 
sculptures represent processions of tribute-bearers 
from five nations. In this record he says that in 
the sixth year of his reign he encountered the com- 
bined forces of Damascus, Hamath, and the Hit- 
tites, at Karkar, and overthrew them. Among the 
allies he mentions Ben-hadad, king of Syria, and 
Ahab, king of Israel (1 Kings xx. 1, 2). Ben- 
hadad was murdered some years later by Hazael 
of Damascus, who had usurped his throne ( 2 Kings 
viii. 15). Shalmaneser began a campaign against 
this usurper, and succeeded in capturing his camp 
and slaying sixteen thousand Syrians. Hazael 
fled to Damascus, whither the Assyrians followed 
him. But they found the city of Damascus too 
strong, and marched to the seacoast, and near 



78 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions* 

Beirut, according to the record on the Black 
Obelisk, received the tribute of Tyre and Sidon, 
and of "Jehu, son of Omri." " In calling Jehu a 
descendant of Omri, the Assyrian king was misin- 
formed; he had heard nothing of the revolution 
which had extirpated the house of Omri, and had 
placed Jehu upon the throne. Like Ahab, there- 
fore, Jehu was supposed to be a son of Omri, the 
founder of Samaria, which is frequently termed 
Beth-Omri, 'the house of Omri,' in the Assyrian 
inscriptions, though in the latter days of Tiglath- 
pileser II., and Sargon, ' Beth-Omri ' is superseded 
by ■ Samirina.' " 

Among the reliefs on the upper part of this obe- 
lisk is one which is supposed to represent Jehu 
himself bringing offerings of gold and silver and 
other tributes to* the Assyrian king. This is a 
literal rendering of the inscription: "Tribute of 
Yahua [Jehu], son of Khumri [Omri] ; silver, gold, 
basins of gold, bottles of gold, vessels of gold, 
buckets of gold, lead, . . . wood, royal treasure, 
. . . wood, I received.'' The features of the 
king and those with him are recognizable as pos- 
sessing Jewish characteristics, and, according to 
Jewish custom, their fringed robes descend to their 
ankles. 

This is the oldest Assyrian inscription in which 
the names of the kings of Israel occur, and it is 
very strange that neither in Kings nor Chronicles 
is there any mention of the participation of Ahab 
in the Syrian league and the war against Shal- 



Nineveh and ihe Assyrians. 79 

maneser, and the submission and tribute of Jehu. 
It has been suggested that perhaps these events 
were recorded in a book which has been lost, and 
to which reference is so frequently made at the 
death of almost every king, under the title of "The 
Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel." 
In 2 Kings x. 34 it is said: "Now the rest of the 
acts of Jehu, and all that he did, and all his might, 
are they not written in the book of the chronicles 
of the kings of Israel? " 

Adad-Nirari, the grandson of Shalmaneser II., 
was the next Assyrian monarch who began a cam- 
paign against Syria. He reigned from B.C. 811 
to 7S3, and succeeded in reducing the kingdom of 
Damascus to subjection. In an inscription which 
has been found he makes this statement: "West 
of the Euphrates, I subdued the- land Khatti, the 
whole of the land Akharri [Phoenicia], Tyre, 
Sidon, Bit-Khumri [the land of Ornri — Israel'], 
Edom, and Philistia, unto the shore of the Sea of 
the Setting Sun, and imposed on them tributes and 
contributions." 

With the death of Adad-Nirari in B.C. 783, the 
strength and power of the old Assyrian dynasty 
collapsed; but thirty-six years later the crown was 
seized by a military adventurer, Pulu, who took 
the name of one of the greatest of the earlier As- 
syrian kings, Tiglath-pileser II. While tradition 
says that this king started in life as a gardener, he 
displayed great military and executive ability after 
he had established himself on the throne, and be- 



8o Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

came one of the greatest monarchs of antiquity. 
He has been called "the Roman of the East," and 
was the first ruler of antiquity who consolidated an 
empire in the manner which has been familiar to 
the world since the Roman era. He made the na- 
tions which he conquered subject provinces, gov- 
erned by Assyrian satraps, and responsible only to 
the king. Each province was required to provide 
a certain number of soldiers for the imperial army, 
and to pay an annual tribute to the imperial treas- 
ury. No less than five Hebrew kings are men- 
tioned in his annals. They are Azariah and Je- 
hoahaz (Ahaz) of Judah, and Menahem, Pekah, 
and Hosea of Israel. Rezin of Damascus and 
Hiram, king of Tyre, are also named. The title of 
Rabshakeh, mentioned by Isaiah (chapters xxxvi., 
xxxvii.), is found in inscriptions, as is also the 
name of Merodach-baladan (Isa. xxxix. i). 

It is said in 2 Kings xv. 19, 20 that " Pul, king 
of Assyria, came against the land ; and Menahem 
gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his 
hand might be with him, to confirm the kingdom in 
his hand. And Menahem exacted the money of 
Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each 
man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of 
Assyria; so the king of Assyria turned back, and 
stayed not there in the land." The annals of Tig- 
lath-pileser very strikingly confirm the accuracy 
of this statement. He says that "Minihimmi of 
Samirina," that is, Menahem of Samaria, with 
Hiram, king of Tyre, Rezin of Damascus, and 



Nineveh and the Assyrians. 81 

other kings, gave him tribute. The amount which 
Menahem gave him must have been at least one 
and one-half million dollars. From the fact that 
the name "Pul" is here used, it is evident that the 
Assyrian monarch was still known to the neighbor- 
ing nations by his original name, and that it was • 
not until later that they addressed him by his new 
title. Berosus gives his name as Pulu, as does also 
Ptolemy, in his list of Babylonian kings, when 
speaking of the eclipses which were observed at 
Babylon, for at this time this Assyrian king was 
also king of Babylon. 

After the death of Menahem, and the murder of 
Pekahiah, his son, Pekah, the usurper, in alliance 
with Rezin of Damascus, attacked Jerusalem. 
Ahaz, who was then king, appealed to the Assyr- 
ian monarch, who readily responded, as he was 
only too glad of an excuse to crush Damascus and 
reduce the kingdom of Judah to a condition of vas- 
salage. Accordingly, he marched into Syria, and 
he tells of his victories in his inscription entitled 
"The War in Palestine." Rezin was defeated, 
his chariots broken in pieces, his captains captured 
and impaled, and he escaped to Damascus. The 
Assyrian king then went back into the Northern 
Kingdom of Israel, put Pekah to death, and ap- 
pointed Hosea king in his place. Tiglath-pileser 
took a series of towns, including the whole land of 
Naphtali, before the death of Pekah, and carried 
a large number of Israelites "captive to Assyria" 
(2 Kings xv. 29, 30). The Assyrian king says in 
6 



82 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

his annals: " Pekah, their king, I killed; . . . Ho- 
shea I placed over them." "The distant land of 
Bit-Khumri, . . . the whole of its inhabitants, with 
their goods, I carried away to Asshur." In ac- 
cordance with the usual custom of the Assyrians, 
he exaggerated the completeness of his conquest, 
though he made the entire territory subject to him. 

Two years later Tiglath-pileser turned all his 
force against Damascus. The inscription which 
describes the siege of Damascus is, unfortunately, 
greatly mutilated ; but enough can be deciphered 
to show that the entire Syrian army was completely 
routed ; that Rezin, *' to save his life, took to flight 
all alone, and entered his capital through the great 
gate"; that Tiglath-pileser captured some of his 
captains, and then " shut him in like a bird in a 
cage" ; that finally Damascus was captured, Rezin 
was slain, his subjects transported into captivity, 
and the kingdom placed under an Assyrian prefect. 
All this confirms the simple statement in 2 Kings 
xvi. 9: "And the king of Assyria went up against 
Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it 
captive to Kir, and slew Rezin." 

The golden age of the Assyrian empire was the 
century from 721 B.C. to 625 B.C. This was the 
zenith of Assyrian power, and this era was ushered 
in by Sargon, who was one of the greatest generals 
Assyria ever produced. And yet the name of this 
great king, which was the same as that of the an- 
cient Sargon of Accad, and which he probably as- 
sumed when he took the royal power, had dropped 



Nineveh and the Assyrians. 83 

out of history as completely as though he had 
never existed; and his name was only known by a 
mention of it in Isaiah's allusions to the war against 
Ashdod (xx. 1): "Tartan came unto Ashdod 
(when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him), and 
fought against Ashdod, and took it." Critics have 
ridiculed the idea of such a king ever having lived, 
and yet the halls of his palace were the first As- 
s}'rian halls ever entered by a modern's foot, and 
in his great library were found complete accounts 
of his campaigns. These records reveal the as- 
tonishing fact that it was this king who captured 
Samaria and carried off its inhabitants. This pal- 
ace is the best preserved of all the Assyrian ruins, 
and was probably the most magnificent building 
ever erected in or near Nineveh, for the site he se- 
lected was that of an exceedingly ancient city, at 
the foot of a mountain, a short distance above 
Nineveh; and the building covered an area of 
more than twenty-five acres. The palace was of 
rare workmanship and exquisite finish, but the 
sculptures exceeded anything that has ever been 
found in Assyria or Babylonia. Every phase of 
the royal builder's life is amply illustrated in them, 
and every peculiarity in the countries he warred 
against is faithfully noted and portrayed. There 
are twenty-four pairs of colossal bulls in high re- 
lief on the outside walls, and at least two miles of 
sculptured slabs along the inner walls of the halls. 
In his great library he gives all the annals of his 
reign. One of the first entries is this: "In the be- 



84 Afounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

ginning of my reign I besieged, I took by the help 
of the god Shamash, who gives me victory over 
my enemies, the city of Samaria. Twenty-seven 
thousand two hundred and ninety of its inhabitants 
I carried away. I took fifty chariots for my own 
royal share. I took them [the captives] to As- 
syria, and put into their places people whom my 
hand had conquered. I set my officers and gov- 
ernors over them, and laid on them a tribute as on 
the Assyrians.' ' Now Sargon succeeded Shal- 
maneser IV., as we learn from the Assyrian in- 
scriptions. In the seventeenth chapter of 2 Kings 
it is said: "Against him [Hoshea, king of Sama- 
ria] came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. . . . 
Then the king of Assyria . . . went up to Sama- 
ria, and besieged it three years." Shalmaneser 
began the siege, but the records show that Sargon, 
his successor, completed it. And the Bible his- 
tory sa} T s: •' In the ninth year of Hoshea the king 
of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away 
into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in 
Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of 
the Medes. ,, (2 Kings xvii. 6.) 

We are also told in the twenty-fourth verse of 
this seventeenth chapter: "And the king of As- 
syria brought men from Babylon, and from Cut- 
hah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from 
Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Sa- 
maria, instead of the children of Israel: and they 
possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof ." 
Sargon says in his annals that, in the seventh year 



Nin eveh an d the A ssyrtans. 85 

of his reign, he " made subject several remote Ara- 
bian tribes that dwelt in a land which no wise men 
and no sender of messengers knew, a land which 
had never paid tribute to the kings, his fathers, 
and the remnant cf them he transported and settled 
in the city of Samaria.''' 

Sargon was succeeded by his son, Sennacherib, 
whose name is the most familiar of any Assyrian 
monarch, and whose invasion of Palestine is re- 
corded in a large number of monuments and tab- 
lets. In the later history of Israel, as recorded in 
the Old Testament, this Assyrian king stands out 
a picturesque and dramatic figure, and the great 
number of well-preserved tablets which have been 
found prove that the expedition into Judea, which 
has been made so familiar to us by the Bible nar- 
rative (2 Kings xviii., xix. ; 2 Chron. xxxii. ; and 
Isa. xxxvi., xxxvii.) and by Byron's beautiful little 
poem, was really one of the most prominent epi- 
sodes of his reign, and was the first disastrous cam- 
paign that Assyria had to record. 

Hezekiah had received from Ahaz a kingdom 
mortgaged to Assyria. Egypt, whose noxious in- 
terference had contributed to the fall of Samaria, 
appears again as a fomenter of insurrection in Pal' 
estine, and persuades Hezekiah to refuse to send 
the yearly tribute to Nineveh. The news of this 
proposed revolt quickly brought Sennacherib down 
to the seashore. 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in silver and gold; 



86 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 

Hezekiah made every preparation for defense — 
built up the walls of Jerusalem wherever they were 
broken down, strengthened the citadel, and set 
"captains of war" over the people. In the mean- 
time, the sacred record says (2 Kings xviii. 13): 
" Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all 
the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.' , In 
. his annals the Assyrian king is more explicit. He 
says: "Forty-six of his strong cities, his castles, 
and the smaller towns of their territory without 
number, with warlike engines, by assault and 
storming, by fire and by the ax, I attacked and 
captured. . . . Hezekiah himself I shut up like 
a bird in a cage in Jerusalem, his royal city. I 
built a line of forts against him, and I kept back 
his heel from going forth out of the great gate of 
his city/' He does not say that he took Jerusa- 
lem, although he makes mention of other cities 
which he captured. The Egyptians still tarried, 
not coming to Hezekiah's assistance as they had 
promised, and in his desperation Hezekiah sought 
to effect a reconciliation. He "sent to the king 
of Assyria, at Lachish, saying: I have offended. 
Return from me; that which thou puttest on me, 
I will bear." And the fine imposed on him was a 
sum equal to about one million dollars in gold and 
half that in silver. This full account is contained 
in the recovered records of Sennacherib, and the 
Assyrian and the biblical accounts supplement one 



Nineveh and the Assyrians. 87 

another, the only difference being that Sennache- 
rib transfers the payment of the tribute to the end 
of the campaign, after his return to Nineveh. 

In 2 Kings xviii. 14 it is said that Hezekiah sent 
this tribute to the king of Assyria to Lachish, and 
in 2 Chronicles xxxii. 9 the statement is made that 
Sennacherib laid siege against Lachish. While it 
is not stated that the city was captured, we have 
the strongest evidence that it was. The capitula- 
tion of the city is represented at full length on one 
of the finest wall sculptures, occupying several 
slabs in the hall of Sennacherib's palace, exca- 
vated by Layard atKeyunjik, and now in the Brit- 
ish Museum. In the foreground sits Sennacherib, 
on a throne of state, the royal feet resting upon a 
high footstool fashioned like the throne; before 
him are his officers with the long file of captives, 
some prostrated, others standing, all with hands 
extended in supplication. An inscription over- 
head interprets the scene in these express words: 
"Sennacherib, king of nations, king of Assyria, 
seated on an exalted throne, receives the spoils of 
the city of Lachish.' ' Sennacherib, in his annals, 
naturally glosses over the disaster that befell him, 
when the angel of the Lord smote the Assyrians in 
their camp, and thousands were slain (2 Kings 
xix. 35). But he cannot conceal the fact that he 
never succeeded in taking the revolted city, or in 
punishing Hezekiah, nor did he again undertake a 
campaign in the west. 

A reminiscence of the disaster which befell the 



88 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Assyrian army was preserved in an Egyptian leg- 
end, and Herodotus gives an account of the tradi- 
tion in his history, which corroborates the scrip- 
tural account. He says that the Assyrians were 
advancing toward Egypt to invade it, when Sethos, 
"the pious Egyptian king," prayed for divine aid, 
and that same night a swarm of field mice was sent 
into the Assyrians' camp, and destroyed the leath- 
ern quivers, shield straps, and bowstrings, so that 
they were virtually disarmed, and a great slaugh- 
ter was made of them. Herodotus says: "There 
stands to this day in the temple of Vulcan a stone 
statue of Sethos, with a mouse in his hand, and an 
inscription to this effect, ' Look on me, and learn 
to reverence the gods!'" Now the mouse was 
in the East the emblem of the plague boil, as is 
shown in I Samuel v. n, 12; vi. 4, 5, where the 
Philistines, smitten with plague boils for detaining 
the ark in their midst, sent it back with a trespass 
offering of five golden emerods and five golden 
mice, their priests also commanding them to make 
" images of your mice that mar the land." 

Sennacherib lived twenty years after his invasion 
of Palestine, most of these years being spent in 
wars with Babylonia. Babylon was at last taken, 
and completely sacked, and he gives an account 
of his victory in the great Taylor cylinder, which 
is said to be one of the finest battle pieces in any 
literature. Sennacherib did much to strengthen 
and beautify Nineveh, and the monuments of the 
latter part of his reign often represent him stand- 



Nineveh and the Assyrians. 89 

ing in his chariot, watching the gangs of captive 
laborers who are yoked together sometimes by a 
bar fastened to the waist, sometimes by fetters 
around their ankles, while they toil at the vast 
walls or drag into place the colossal bulls and 
dragons which adorned the palaces. 

Sennacherib came to a tragic end, his murder 
taking place " as he was worshiping in the house 
of Nisroch, his god." It is stated in 2 Kings 
xix. 37 that "Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons 
smote him with the sword," doubtless because of 
their jealousy of the favor shown to Esar-haddon, 
for among the clay tablets in the British Museum 
is one which actually contains the will of Sen- 
nacherib, executed some time before his death, in 
which he bequeaths his valuables to Esar-haddon, 
his favorite son. Very recently a discovery was 
made which strikingly corroborates this parricidal 
crime. A stele of Nabonidus, dated in the sixth 
century B.C., was found in the old city boundary 
of Babylon by some Arabs while at work in the 
ruins. The now mutilated cuneiform inscription 
consisted originally of eleven long columns, of 
which only the lower portion has been preserved. 
Nabonidus, contrary to his usual custom, inter- 
weaves a number of important historical events in 
the account of his own work. Among other things, 
he gives a brief description of the destruction of 
Babylon by Sennacherib in the year 689 B.C., and 
tells of the murder of this king by his own son 
(giving only one name). 



go Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

An additional confirmation of this scriptural ac- 
count of the murder of the Assyrian king is an in- 
scription from Nineveh, in the British Museum, 
which is supposed to record the feelings with 
which Esar-haddon received the news of his la- 
ther's death. " I was angry in heart, and my liver 
was inflamed with rage," he says. "For the rul- 
ing of my father's house, and the assumption of my 
priesthood to Ashur, the Moon, the Sun, Bel,Nebo, 
Nergal, Istar of Nineveh and Istar of Arbela, I lift- 
ed up my hands; and they granted my petition." 

Sennacherib completely destroyed Babylon, the 
rival capital, and tried to render even the site un- 
recognizable. But his son and successor, Esar- 
haddon, rebuilt Babylon and made it his capital. 
This explains the statement made in 2 Chronicles 
(xxxiii. ii ) that Manasseh, king of Israel, was car- 
ried in chains to Babylon by the king of Assyria, 
and allowed subsequently to return. The critics 
have rejected this statement because they say that 
the king of Assyria should have carried him to Nine- 
veh and not to Babylon. But the exhumed records 
show that at this time King Esar-haddon was living 
at Babylon, trying to win the conquered people. 

The name " Manasseth, king of Judah," occurs 
twice on the Assyrian monuments. Once he is 
mentioned among the tributaries of Esar-haddon, 
once among those of Assur-banipal. 

Esar-haddon has been styled "the noblest and 
most gracious figure" among Assyrian rulers. His 
reign was a short one, and his end has a certain 



Nineveh and the Assyrians. 91 

romantic charm. In B.C. 670, on the twelfth day 
of April, he convened by edict a great assembly in 
Nineveh, and there gave charge of the government 
to his son Assur-banipal, whom the Greeks called 
Sardanapalus. Two years later he died, and Assur- 
banipal became sole monarch. He was the most 
powerful and enlightened monarch of his time, full 
of insight and energy, and the patron of art and lit- 
erature. His great monument, greater than any 
imperial sculptures, is the library and " university " 
which the tablets say he founded " for the instruc- 
tion of the people of Nineveh." This library was 
discovered and excavated by Hormuzd Rassam 
nearly fifty years ago. He recognized the tablets 
of burned clay covered with cuneiform characters, 
as writings, and sent enormous quantities of them 
to the British Museum. There they lay nearly 
thirty years before they were deciphered by the 
patience and skill of George Smith. Among the 
great mass of documents which were translated 
was the famous Chaldean account of the deluge, 
and the Babylonian legends of the creation, which 
were copies of much older documents. This li- 
brary of Assur-banipal was a royal storehouse of 
literature, science, history, and religion, and is the 
greatest collection of Assyrian and Babylonian 
manuscripts that has been found. 

Saracus was the last king of the great Assyrian 
empire, although Byron, in his tragedy of Sarda- 
napalus, has committed the error of confounding 
Saracus with Assur-banipal, known among the 



92 Mounds ) Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Greeks as Sardanapalus, who was the father of 
Saracus, and a very different character from the 
last effeminate and voluptuous Assyrian king. In or 
about 606 B.C. the combined forces of Medes and 
Babylonians besieged Nineveh for two years. In 
their despair the Assyrian rulers ordained a solemn 
fast of one hundred days, and besought the sun god 
to pardon their sin. But all was in vain. The last 
day of Assyrian greatness deepened into twilight. 
The river conspired with fate to overthrow the de- 
fenses of the city, and an extraordinary rise in the 
Tigris swept away a part of the walls and allowed 
the besieging army to enter. The tramp of the 
Median soldiers was heard in the streets. The in- 
habitants, who had never before beheld a foreign 
foe except as trembling captives, fled in dismay. 
The king hastily entered his palace, ordered the 
slaves to heap the sacred things into a funeral 
pyre, and mounting to the summit with his wives 
and servants, applied the torch and perished in the 
flames. When the conquerors entered his palace his 
ashes lay white upon the marble floor, mingled with 
the ashes of the Assyrian empire. With the ruthless 
barbarity of the times the conquerors gave the whole 
city over to the flames, and razed its former magnif- 
icence to the ground. For twenty-five centuries the 
great city lay buried and forgotten, to rise in these 
latter days from the tomb to vindicate with its libra- 
ries and monuments the historical accuracy of the 
Old Testament, and to assist us in our progress to- 
ward the final goal of truth and knowledge. 



CHAPTER VII. 
The History of Jonah. 

Dagon, the Fish God — Nineveh, the "Fish City" — Berosus — 
Oannes — Neby-Yunus. 

No record of the journey of the prophet Jonah to 
Nineveh and his preaching there has been found 
on the Assyrian monuments, although the history 
is given at length in the Bible. With the excep- 
tion of his mission to Nineveh, the only mention 
made of him in the history of Israel is in 2 Kings 
xiv. 25, in the reign of Jeroboam, which fixes the 
date of his ministry as about 800 B.C. He was 
born at Gath-hepher, a little town in the hills of 
Galilee, about an hour's ride north of Nazareth, and 
which is still pointed out to the traveler. He was 
a child when Homer was singing his rhapsodies 
on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean; was 
a contemporary of the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus, 
of Hesiod, and of other notable Greek characters, 
as well as of such men as Obadiah, Joel, Amos, and 
Hosea, who belonged to the last school of Old Tes- 
tament prophets. There can be no doubt that he 
was an historical character, for he lived not in a 
mythical, but in an historical and prophetical age. 
The references which our Lord makes to him es- 
tablish his historical personality (Matt. xii. 39, 40; 
Luke xi. 29, 32). 

The preaching of a Jewish prophet to a people 

(93) 



94 Mounds, Monuments^ and Inscriptions. 

who had been the enemies and oppressors of his 
people seems a strange thing, and it seems still 
more remarkable that they should have listened 
to his ministry and repented. But some interesting 
facts and discoveries have put this entire event in a 
new light. We now know that the date of Jonah's 
prophecy coincides with the disastrous period of 
weakness and intestine troubles which preced- 
ed the second Tiglath-pileser, when the Assyrian 
monarchy seemed threatened with dissolution. So 
that the Ninevites were in a condition to ask for 
divine help, and the proclamation of a public fast 
and penance, when national danger and calamity 
threatened them, was in accordance with the As- 
S}^ro-Babylonian custom. Neither was there any- 
thing very strange in the fact that the fears of all 
the people of that great oriental city should have 
been aroused by the proclamation of an impending 
doom. "I have known," says Layard, "a priest 
to frighten a whole Mussulman town to tears and 
repentance by publicly proclaiming that he had 
received a divine commission to announce a com- 
ing earthquake or plague." Herodotus and other 
classical writers also state that it was an Asiatic 
custom to cover with badges of mourning both 
men and cattle. 

The miracle of Jonah being swallowed by a great 
fish, and then delivered after three days, has been 
considered not only supernatural, but unnatural; 
and no incident in Bible history has been more 
merciless!}'- assailed. But in the light of recent ex- 



The History of Jonah. 95 

cavations and discoveries at Nineveh, as well as in 
the face of certain historical facts which have been 
brought to view, w r e not only understand why God 
worked this miracle, but we also see that it was 
probably the only means that could have been em- 
ployed to make the Ninevites hear and heed the 
message. 1 

One of the most prominent among the divinities 
of ancient Assyria, as shown by the monuments, 
was Dagon, a creature part man and part fish. In- 
scriptions dating from 3000 B.C., containing his 
name, have been found at Ur. From Babylon his 
worship spread into other parts of Asia ; in Nine- 
veh he was adored as the fish god, and the priests 
devoted to his service wore garments made of fish 
skins. His images have been found guarding the 
entrance to palace and temple in the ruins of Nin- 
eveh, and they appear upon a large number of seals 
in the British Museum. In one of his inscriptions 
Nebuchadrezzar mentions that he dedicated some 
ornaments for a temple of Dagon. The worship 
of this fish god spread from Assyria west, and he 
became the chief deity of the Philistines. He was 
the presiding divinity of the maritime city of Ash- 

iSome of the facts here brought out in connection with the 
Assyrian fish god and Jonah were first brought to light by Dr. 
H. Clay Trumbull, editor of the Sunday-school Times, in a little 
book published in Philadelphia. Some additional interesting 
discoveries have since been made which strongly corroborate 
the theory given. Hastings's "Dictionary of the Bible," how- 
ever, disputes this position. The readers of this chapter must 
judge for themselves. 



96 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

dod, and when they captured the ark of Israel they 
put it in his temple. " When they arose early on 
the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen 
upon his face to the ground before the ark of the 
Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms 
of his hands we cut off upon the threshold: only 
the jishy -part of Dagon was left to him." ( 1 Sam. 
v. 4.) 

One of the earliest Assyrian kings was named 
Ishmi-Dagan {Dag meaning fish), and bricks 
bearing his name have been found in the temple 
ruins of one of the oldest Accadian cities. In As- 
calon and other Canaanitish cities a fish goddess 
was worshiped under the name of Derketo, who 
was represented under the form of a woman, end- 
ing, from the hips, in the body of a fish. In many 
oriental countries it was considered sacrilegious 
to eat or kill fish, and a well-filled, religiously- 
tended fish pond often occupied some part of the 
temple grounds. 

Another very important fact which has come to 
light in a recent discovery is that the Assyrian 
name of their great city was Ninua, a word very 
like JVunu, which means "fish"; and that the 
oldest sign for the rendering of the name Nineveh 
in cuneiform writing is a combination of lines and 
wedges which represent a fish in a basin or tank. 
The very oldest traditions represent the fish as sa- 
cred to the Ninevites, and their city was called the 
Fish City. 

According to Berosus, a Babylonian historian 



The History of Jonah. 97 

who wrote in the fourth century B.C., at the time 
of Alexander's conquests, the very beginning of 
civilization in Chaldea and Babylonia was under 
the direction of the fish god, part man and part 
fish, who came up out of "the Erythraean Sea, 
which borders upon Babylonia," and taught to men 
"letters and sciences and arts of every kind," so 
that no great discovery has ever been made since. 
To this deity was also attributed the invention of 
the plow, making him the protector of agricul- 
ture generally and the dispenser of food. Berosus 
also states that from time to time, ages apart, other 
beings like this first great teacher came up out of 
the sea with messages and instructions for man- 
kind. 

Hence, at that very age in which Jonah lived, 
the Ninevites were worshipers of a divine being 
who, from time to time, so they claimed, sent mes- 
sages to them by one who rose out of the sea, as 
part man and part fish; and to them also the fish 
was the most sacred thing in the animal world, it 
being the very name of their city. When, then, 
God wished to send a messenger to Nineveh, what 
better method could possibly have been empk^ed 
than for this prophet to be thrown out of the mouth 
of a great fish, in the presence of witnesses who 
would bear testimony to the fact that he came up 
out of the water ? The news of what had happened 
was doubtless proclaimed by couriers throughout 
the streets of the great city, and as they learned of 
this new messenger from the fish god, the Ninevites 
7 



9S Mounds, Monuments ) and Inscriptions, 

were prepared to receive his message. When, 
then, Jonah went through the streets of their city 
declaring, " Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be 
overthrown!" and they knew that he was the 
prophet who had come from the very mouth of 
a fish in the sea, ail the people, from the king on 
his throne to the humblest peasant, put on sack- 
cloth and fasted, and cried mightily unto the Lord 
to avert the threatened disaster. 

Another very remarkable fact is that while all 
the Assyrian monuments give the name of the fish 
god as Dagan or Dagon, Berosus gives his name 
as "Oannes." This name Oannes, as it stands in 
the Greek of Berosus, appears in the Septuagint 
and in the Greek New Testament, with the addi- 
tion of "I" before it — "Joannes" and "Iona" — 
and is translated "Jona" (see John i. 42, xxi. 
15; Matt. xvi. 17). Professor Hilprecht also says 
that in the Assyrian inscriptions the "J " of foreign 
words becomes "I," or disappears altogether; 
hence Joannes as the Greek representative of Jona 
would appear in Assyrian either as Ioannes or as 
Oannes. Hence he expresses the opinion that 
Oannes would be a regular Greco-Babylonian writ- 
ing iox Jonah. Is it not, in the light of all these 
facts, perfectly legitimate to infer that Berosus, 
writing four hundred years after Jonah's day, 
should have described Jonah as the latest messen- 
ger from the fish god of the Assyrians ? 

Notwithstanding the loss of the site of Nineveh 
for twenty-five hundred years, an Arab village 



The History of Jonah. 99 

bearing the name of Neby-Yunus was found by 
Hormuzd Rassam, built over the ruined palaces of 
Sennacherib and other Assyrian kings. In this 
village is shown what is claimed to be the tomb of 
Jonah, and also a mosque dedicated to him. Is it 
not remarkable that the name of Jonah should have 
been retained in that locality, when no trace of 
the name or site of Nineveh remained? It is also 
a striking fact that an entire chapter in the Koran 
is inscribed with the name of Jonah, and the Mo- 
hammedans have great reverence for him. 

Recent excavations also confirm the statements 
made in the book of Jonah regarding the immense 
size of Nineveh. These discoveries show that it 
contained more than one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand young children, thus proving that it had a 
population of more than half a million. Thus the 
revelations of the Assyrian monuments and inscrip- 
tions, and of the later Babylonian historian, cor- 
roborate in a very remarkable manner the Bible 
history of Jonah. 

L.ofC. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Moabite Stone and the Tel-el-Amarna 
Tablets. 

Discovery of the Moabite Stone — Mesha, King of Moab— The 
Inscription Translated — Oldest Hebrew Literary Monument 
— Philological Value — Tel-el-Amarna Tablets — Date of the 
Exodus — Discovery at Tel-el-Hesy. 

One of the best known and most interesting of ar- 
chaeological discoveries is that of the famous Mo- 
abite Stone, erected by King Mesha, the "sheep- 
master," to commemorate his successful revolt 
when Moab rebelled against Israel, after the death 
of Ahab (2 Kings iii. 4, 5). This memorial of 
Hebrew history is a stone of black basalt in the 
shape of a stele, rounded at the top, two feet broad 
and nearly four feet high. It contains thirty-four 
lines in the curious Phoenician script, proving that 
at 900 B.C. the Hebrews and Moabites had the 
same dialect as the Phoenicians. Moab, like Edom 
and some other nations of Palestine, was so nearly 
akin to the Hebrews in race as to speak the same 
language. The Moabites have long since become 
extinct as a people, being perhaps absorbed by the 
Arabs, as the Edomites were, but this discovery 
has revived their memory. 

This stone was discovered in 1869 by Dr. Klein, 
a German missionary, at the foot of a hill among 
the ruins of Dhiban, the ancient Dibon (Num. 
(100) 



The Moabite Stone. 101 

xxxii. 34), the old capital of Moab, half buried in 
the ground. While slow negotiations were pend- 
ing for its purchase, the Arabs conceived an exag- 
gerated idea of its value and refused to sell it. The 
official head of the district heard of the discovery, 
and laid claim to the valuable stone, whereupon 
the poor villagers, fearing that they would lose it, 
put a hot fire under it, poured cold water over it, 
broke it into pieces, and distributed the fragments 
as charms among the different families of the tribe. 
After much labor and expense, most of the frag- 
ments were recovered, and, aided by a " squeeze," 
which had fortunately been previously taken, the 
monument was pieced together, and is now in the 
Museum of the Louvre at Paris. 

This inscription is a striking confirmation of the 
third chapter of 2 Kings, and the story told by the 
stone and the scriptural account of the war against 
Moab supplement one another. The Bible record 
says that " Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheepmas- 
ter, and rendered unto the king of Israel a hundred 
thousand lambs, and a hundred thousand rams, 
with the wool. But it came to pass, when Ahab 
was dead, that the king of Moab rebelled against 
the king of Israel." The chapter goes on to de- 
scribe the combination of the kings of Israel and 
Judah against Moab, and how they pressed the 
conflict until at last King Mesha saw that the bat- 
tle was too sore for him. He then, in his despair, 
resorted to the last horrible appeal of the Canaan- 
itish religion and sacrificed his eldest son as a burnt 



102 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

offering to Chemosh, the god of Moab, which act 
so filled the Israelites with horror and indignation 
that they returned to their own land. It is this great 
deliverance which Mesha celebrates in his inscrip- 
tion, though he does not mention the price at which 
he bought it. The inscription reads almost like a 
chapter from one of the historical books of the Old 
Testament, the words and phrases being similar to 
those found in scriptural Hebrew, as well as the 
grammatical forms. These are some of the sen- 
tences on this stone: 

1 * I am Mesha , king of Moab . My father reigned 
over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my 
father and erected this high place for Chemosh, 
for he saved me from all despoilers, and made me 
see my desire upon all my enemies, even upon 
Omri, king of Israel. Now they afflicted Moab 
many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. 
His son succeeded him; and he also said, I will 
afflict Moab. But I saw my pleasure on him and 
on his house, and Israel perished with an everlast- 
ing destruction. And Chemosh said unto me, Go 
take Nebo against Israel. And I went and fought 
from dawn until noon. And I took it and slew the 
whole of it, seven thousand men and women, and 
manservants and maidservants. . . . And I took 
from it the vessels of Yahveh, and offered them 
before Chemosh." 

The name Jehovah occurs in this inscription, 
spelled in exactly the same way as in the Old Tes- 
tament. We have here a proof that in the early 



The Moabiie Stone. 103 

days of Israel the superstition did not exist which 
afterwards prevented the Jews from pronouncing 
it. We see also that the name under which God 
was worshiped was familiar to the nations round 
aboutr 

This is not only the oldest Hebrew literary mon- 
ument in existence, but the most ancient specimen 
of alphabet writing. This alphabet was of Egyptian 
origin. While the Egyptians used hieroglyphics 
to express ideas and syllables, they also used the 
letters of an alphabet. As far back as the second 
dynasty, they possessed an alphabet in which the 
twenty-one simple sounds of the language were rep- 
resented by special hieroglyphic pictures. It was 
doubtless in the Hyksos era that the Egyptian al- 
phabet became Phoenician. It drifted to the mother 
country of Phoenicia, and there the letters received 
new names, derived from objects to which they bore 
a resemblance and which began with the sounds 
they represented. This Egyptian-Phoenician alpha- 
bet next passed to the Greeks, then from the Greeks 
to the Romans, and finally from the Romans to the 
nations of modern Europe. We have a living mon- 
ument to this fact in the very word "alphabet," 
w r hich is composed of alfha and beta, the names of 
the first two Greek letters, and these names are 
simply the Phoenician alefh (an ox) and beth (a 
house), the first bearing a resemblance originally to 
the head of an ox and the latter to the outline of a 
house. 

The Moabite Stone, therefore, is of very great 



104 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

importance, not only from an historical standpoint, 
but also because of its philological value. The 
inscription shows the forms of the Phoenician letters 
used on the eastern side of the Jordan in the time 
of Ahab. Israel and Judah, on the western side, 
must have used very similar characters ; so that we 
may see in this ancient inscription the precise mode 
of writing employed by the earlier prophets of the 
Old Testament. The importance of this knowl- 
edge can hardly be estimated, since it serves to 
correct and restore passages that have been cor- 
rupted and to get the correct spelling of ancient 
proper names. 

The Tel-el- Am arna Tablets. 

What are called the Tel-el-Amarna tablets have 
thrown exceedingly interesting and important light 
on the condition of Palestine before the exodus, 
and have also given us some valuable information 
regarding Egypt at that time. From the time that 
Jacob went down into Egypt until the Hebrew oc- 
cupation of the promised land, we know nothing 
from Scripture of the nations who inhabited the 
land. But the inscriptions found on these tablets 
make a new and interesting chapter in the early 
history of Canaan. 

Tel-el-Amarna is a village about one hundred and 
seventy miles south of Cairo, on the eastern bank 
of the Nile, midway between Minieh and Siout, and 
its extensive ruins cover the site of the capital of 
Amenophis IV., or Khu-n-Aten, of the eighteenth 



The Tel-el-Amarna Tablets. 105 

Egyptian dynasty. This Pharaoh had been raised 
under Asiatic influences, his pedecessors having 
made themselves masters of Asia as far as the banks 
of the Euphrates. Soon after he ascended the 
throne, he renounced the faith of his forefathers 
and adopted the worship of the Asiatic Baal, whose 
visible symbol was the solar disk. This naturally 
produced an intense conflict between the king and 
the powerful priesthood of Thebes, which finally 
resulted in Amenophis leaving the old capital and 
building a new city to the north, the ruins of which 
are now known as Tel-el-Amarna. The royal ar- 
chives were carried away from Thebes to this^new 
capital, and remained there hidden for more than 
three thousand years. In 1888 a peasant woman 
living in that wretched little mud village, in search- 
ing for antiquities to sell to tourists from Europe 
and America, discovered in a mound of sand and 
rock over three hundred pieces of inscribed tablets, 
some of them only two and one-eighth by one and 
eleven-sixteenths inches, while others were eight 
and three-fourths by four and seven-eighths inches. 
One hundred and sixty of these are now in the 
Royal Museum at Berlin ; eighty-two are in the Brit- 
ish Museum ; and sixty are in the Gizeh Museum 
at Cairo, while a few are in private hands. 

These tablets were written in the cuneiform char- 
acters of Babylonia, and consisted principally of 
letters and dispatches from Egyptian officers and 
governors stationed by the Egyptian kings at vari- 
ous places in Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria. A 



106 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

few of the tablets were letters from the independ- 
ent sovereigns of Babylonia, Assyria, Mesopota- 
mia, and eastern Asia Minor. 

These tablets demonstrate that in the fifteenth 
century before Christ (for that is their date), and 
in the century before the exodus, active literary 
intercourse was carried on all through the civilized 
East by the medium of a common literary language 
— that of Babylonia. It is evident also that through- 
out western Asia schools and libraries must have 
existed in which clay tablets inscribed v/ith cunei- 
form characters were stored. Such a library must 
have existed in the Canaanitish city of Kirjath- 
sepher, or " Book-town" (Judges i. n),and when 
its site is discovered there will doubtless be found 
there a collection of books written upon imperisha- 
ble clay. This discovery shows how utterly absurd 
are the objections of some of the critics to the cred- 
ibility of the Pentateuch on the ground that the use 
of writing for literary purposes was unknown to 
the Israelites and the people of Canaan in the age 
of Moses. As a matter of fact, we now know that 
that was an age of the highest literary activity. 
Letters were constantly passing to and fro from 
the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Nile, 
and Canaan, the high road between east and west, 
was the center of this literary intercourse. 

This correspondence discovered at Tel-el-Amar- 
na shows that Palestine and Phoenicia at that time 
(1430 B.C.) formed an Eg} r ptian province, under 
the rule of Egyptian governors, and there were as 



The Tel-el- Amarna Tablets. 107 

4/ 
yet no traces of the Israelite in the land. But the 

Canaanitish population was already threatened by 

an enemy from the north. These were the Hit- 

tites, to whom references are made in several of 

the dispatches from Syria and Phoenicia. 

Seven of these letters are from Abdi-Khiba or 
Ebed-Tob, governor of Uru-Salim (Jerusalem), 
who says he is hard pressed by formidable foes, 
termed the Khabiri, whom Professor Sayce sup- 
poses to be the Hittites and the Amorites, and whom 
he calls "confederates." As a matter of fact, 
both the Amorites and the Hittites figure in the let- 
ters, and this early association of the two with Je- 
rusalem is of very great interest when we remember 
the words of the prophet Ezekiel (xvi. 3): "Thy 
birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan ; thy 
father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite." 

Two other interesting facts, in addition to those 
already given, are brought to light by these tablets. 
In the first place, the date of the exodus has been 
approximately determined as not earlier than B.C. 
1320. Secondly, we understand now the state- 
ment (Exodus i. 8) that the Pharaoh of the oppres- 
sion was "a new king which knew not Joseph." 
We learn from the tablets that Khu-n-Aten was not 
only half Semitic in descent and wholly Semitic in 
faith, but that he also surrounded himself with offi- 
cers and courtiers of Phoenician or Canaanitish ex- 
traction. From one of the Tel-el -Amarna letters 
we learn that the vizier himself, who stood next to 
the monarch, bore the name Dudu, the Dodo and 



io8 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

David of the Old Testament, which belonged spe- 
cifically to the land of Canaan, a fact which shows 
the high position held in Egypt at that time by 
Semites belonging to the Canaanite, if not to the 
Hebrew, race. This fully explains the position held 
previous to that by Joseph and the favor shown to 
the Israelites. We understand now that it was not 
until the overthrow of the eighteenth dynasty, of 
which Khu-n-Aten was the last Pharaoh, that the 
Semitic stranger ceased to be honored and power- 
ful in the land of Egypt. 

The rise of the nineteenth dynasty under Ram- 
eses I. marked the reaction against Semitic influ- 
ence and a change of policy which brought with it 
the expulsion of the foreigner. Thebes became 
again the capital of the kingdom, and the Egyp- 
tian hierarchy and aristocracy took their revenge 
upon the hated stranger. The Israelites were nec- 
essarily included in this war against the Asiatic ele- 
ment, and their children were destroyed and their 
adults handed over to public slavery. In the " new 
king which knew not Joseph" we must therefore 
see this founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and in 
his successor the Pharaoh of the oppression, who 
has been proved by the discovery of Pithom to be 
Rameses II., the grandson of Rameses I. 
' A discovery was made in 1891 at a mound known 
as Tel-el-Hesy in the southwest of Judea, about 
six miles southwest of Hebron, which rivals in in- 
terest any that have ever taken place in the history 
of oriental archaeology, in that there have been 



The Tel-el- Amarna Tablets, 109 

found there the first fruits of a Canaanitish library 
which existed before Moses was born. Under this 
huge mound there have been excavated the remains 
of no less than eleven different cities, built one on 
top of the other, showing that when one city had 
been burned or otherwise destroyed, another had 
arisen in its place. The fourth city has been iden- 
tified as Lachish, one of the live strongholds of -the 
Amorites (Josh. x. 5), which was captured by the 
Israelites under Joshua (Josh. x. 32), fortified by 
Rehoboam (2 Chron. xi. 9), and known from one 
of his own inscriptions to have been taken b}^ Sen- 
nacherib (2 Chron. xxxii.9). The Tel-el- Amarna 
tablets show that an Egyptian governor resided at 
Lachish who wrote, and therefore must have re- 
ceived, cuneiform dispatches on clay. His name 
was Zimridi, and among the Tel-el- Amarna tab- 
lets now in Berlin is a letter addressed by him to 
the Egyptian Pharaoh, and which begins : *' To the 
king my lord, thus writes Zimridi, the governor of 
the city of Lachish." In the excavations at La- 
chish a large number of Egyptian beads and scarabs 
and pottery were brought to light which belonged 
to the age of the eighteenth dynasty, and on one 
of the beads is the name and title of Queen Teie, 
the wife of Amenophis III. and mother of Ameno- 
phis IV., to whom the correspondence of Tel-el- 
Amarna was addressed. The most interesting dis- 
covery, however, was that of a clay tablet, similar 
in form and size to those found at Tel-el-Amarna, 
which had been sent to Egypt from southern Pal- 



no Mounds y Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

estine. It turns out to be one of the letters which 
were received at Lachish and stored up in the 
archive chamber of the- city about the very time 
that Zimridi's letter to the Pharaoh was written. 
The name of the Egyptian governor of Lachish, 
Zimridi, is twice mentioned in it. The extraordi- 
nary feature of this discovery is that just after it 
had been found out that a governor of Lachish 
named Zimridi wrote letters in the Babylonian lan- 
guage and syllabary to the Pharaoh of Egypt, the 
site of Lachish was identified, and a letter similar 
to those of Zimridi was found in those ruins in 
which the name of Zimridi twice occurs. "For 
more than four thousand years the broken halves 
of a correspondence that was carried on before the 
days of the exodus had thus been lying under the 
soil, the one half on the banks of the Nile, the other 
half in Canaan; and the recovery of the one from 
its long-continued oblivion was followed almost im- 
mediately by the recovery of the other. " 



CHAPTER IX. 
Origin of Egyptian Civilization. 

Physical Features of Egypt — Egyptian Dynasties — Discovery 
of the Tomb of Menes — First Egyptian Civilization — The 
Earliest Known Jewelry — Aborigines of Egypt — Egyptian 
Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform Inscriptions — Civilization an 
Inheritance. 

Next to Palestine, Egypt is to the Bible student 
the most interesting country in the world. Its vast 
antiquity, its great monuments and temples, its 
magnificent civilization, and the wonderful achieve- 
ments which it made in the very dawn of the 
world's history, invest it with the very highest in- 
terest to the scholar and the philosopher. 

In its physical features Egypt is the strangest 
country in the world, wholly unique, and entirely 
unlike any other land. Some one has said that 
Egypt in shape is like a lily with a long, crooked 
stem. The blossom is the delta, while the long 
stalk is the Nile valley itself, which is a ravine 
scooped in the rocky soil for seven hundred miles 
from the first cataract to the apex of the delta, 
sometimes not more than a mile broad, never more 
than eight or ten miles. No other country in the 
world is so strangely shaped, so long compared 
with its width, so straggling, so hard to govern 
from a single center. 

The monuments and architecture of Egypt are 

(in) 



112 Mounds, Monuments > and Inscriptions. 

its great, -t glory. Chaldca and Assyria have left 
only mounds beneath which are buried the records 
of their greatness, but Egypt has left huge pyra- 
mids, colossal statues, tall obelisks, enormous tem- 
ples, and great rock tombs. These temples, pyra- 
mids, and tombs have been particularly rich in the 
treasures they have yielded, and have maintained 
the reputation which Pliny ascribed to the country 
of the Nile, of ever disclosing something new to 
the world. The entire valley of the Nile is one 
great museum, a veritable treasure-house of ar- 
chaeology. Not only do these temples and pyra- 
mids contain invaluable records of the past, but 
the ancient Egyptians buried their choicest treas- 
ures with their embalmed dead; and it has been 
aptly said that all Egypt is but the facade of an im- 
mense sepulcher. In upper Egypt, where rain 
and frost are practically unknown, nothing per- 
ishes except by the hand of man. It is estimated 
that the population of the Nile valle} r , during a pe- 
riod of between four and five thousand years, em- 
balmed and secreted no less than seven hundred 
and thirty-one million mummies, interring with 
them not only statues, vases, weapons, amulets, in- 
scribed tablets, jewels, etc., but written documents 
on papyrus, leather, and linen. While hundreds 
of these tombs have been examined and have 
yielded up their treasures, there are tens of thou- 
sands which are yet unopened, and every few weeks 
some new and marvelous discovery is made. 
A few years ago a distinguished scholar declared 



Origin of Egyptian Civilization, 113 

that Egypt was " the inventor of the alphabet, the 
cradle of letters, the preacher of animism and me- 
tempsychosis, and, generally, the source of all 
human civilization." Egypt has been known as 
"The Homestead of Nations," and it has long 
been the theory of archaeologists and Egyptologists • 
that civilization originated in Egypt, though they 
have never been able to go back far enough to tell 
when this civilization started. It has been repeat- 
edly stated that the earliest civilized man of whom 
we know anything is the ancient Egyptian. There 
is no trace of the time when the dweller in the val- 
ley of the Nile was a savage. " His faintest, far- 
thest footprint on the sands of time bears the im- 
press of a sandal," and no traces have been dis- 
covered which led up to the civilization of the old 
empire. Only a year or two ago Professor A. H. 
Sayce, an authority on all archaeological questions, 
wrote: " Egyptian civilization, so far as we know 
at present, has no beginning; the farther back we 
go, the more perfect and developed we find it to 
have been." 

Recently some of the most remarkable discov- 
eries of the century have been made, completely 
revolutionizing the theories of Egyptologists, so 
that now we know for the first time whence Egypt 
derived her civilization, and are able to trace her 
history back to its origin. To explain this fully it 
is necessary to give the generally accepted theory 
with regard to Egyptian history. The history of 
ancient Egypt is divided into three great periods, 



114 Mounds, Monuments^ and Inscriptions. 

known as the Old Empire, the Middle Empire, and 
the New Empire. The Old Empire comprises the 
first six dynasties; the Middle Empire reached its 
climax under the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties; 
the New Empire followed the expulsion of the 
Ilyksos foreigners who had held Lower Egypt 
for more than five hundred years, and consisted of 
the eighteenth and following dynasties. It has al- 
ways been claimed that the first king of Egypt was 
Menes, and his age has been fixed by the most 
conservative at 4700 B.C. Up to the time of these 
last discoveries no trace of Menes or of the first 
dynasty had ever been found, although it has been 
the opinion of many that the Sphinx antedated 
Menes. Hitherto our knowledge of ancient Egyp- 
tian civilization began with the fourth dynasty, the 
age of the great pyramids of Gizeh and of the rock- 
cut tombs that lay at their feet. 

About three years ago M. de Morgan, director 
general of antiquities of the Egyptian government, 
discovered an extensive tomb at Negada, fifteen or 
twenty miles north of Thebes, built of mud brick 
and of earth, and consisting of about thirty cham- 
bers. Each chamber contained a different class 
of objects, one of stone vases, one of stone dishes, 
one of copper tools, one of water jars, etc. Some 
of these objects were carvings in rock crystal and 
obsidian, and some in ivory. The largest chamber 
was in the center, and it is evident that here the 
body of the dead was laid. After burial, wood was 
piled around the walls of this chamber and set on 



Origin of Egyptian Civilization. 115 

fire, the result being that all within it was partially 
consumed. Here were found the calcined bones 
of a king which have been identified as those of 
Menes, the first historic king of Egypt; and these 
fragments of his body are now in the Gizeh Mu- 
seum. There were found in this tomb the frag- 
ments of an ivory plaque, which , when put to- 
gether, showed the "banner" or Ka name of 
the king — that is, the name given to his Ka or 
"double" after death — and also his human name, 
Menes. To this latter name was affixed the title 
"King of Upper and Lower Egypt." The Ka 
name is also found on several other objects discov- 
ered in the tomb. 

Some of the vases of alabaster found in this tomb 
are of immense size, and their artistic perfection is 
very astonishing. Among the objects of crystal is 
a small lion, now in the Gizeh Museum, which 
once belonged to Menes himself. The museum 
also contains a foot of the funeral couch of that 
monarch. It is of ivory, and is carved into the 
form of the foot of an ox. 

This remarkable discovery is another instance in 
which the old tradition, discredited by the critics, 
has been verified. The very existence of Menes 
has been denied, and only a few years ago so high 
an authority as Professor Maspero declared in his 
"Dawn of Civilization" that Menes was a myth- 
ical personage; and yet the grave and bones and 
seal of this king, whose existence was declared to 
be clue to "a popular attempt at etymology," are 



n6 Mounds ', Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

now among the exhumed treasures of Egyptian 
archaeology. 

Additional discoveries have been made during 
the past year by Professor Flinders Petrie, who 
spent last winter in exploring these recently dis- 
covered tombs. Professor Petrie says: 

"We are now able to trace the regular devel- 
opment of civilization during four hundred years, 
from the time when writing was rarely used, and 
then only in a rude, pictorial stage, down to the 
common use of delicately figured hieroglyphics 
which could not be distinguished from those which 
were used thousands of years afterwards. We have 
found beautifully wrought jewelry and gold work, 
minutely engraved ivories and toilet objects of Me- 
nes, the founder of monarchy, fashioned more than 
six thousand five hundred years ago. 

" Of Zer, the successor to Menes, it is astonish- 
ing to find the forearm of his queen still in its wrap- 
pings, with four splendid bracelets intact. One is 
a series of figures of the royal hawk perched on the 
tomb. There are thirteen figures in chased gold, 
alternating with fourteen in carved turquoise. The 
second bracelet is composed of spiral beads of gold 
and lazuli, in three groups. The third bracelet 
has four groups in the shape of an hourglass, with 
beads of amethyst between gold, with connections 
of gold and turquoise. The fourth has a center- 
piece of gold, copied from the rosette seed, with 
amethyst and turquoise beads and bands and braid- 
ed gold wire. 



Origin of Egyptian Civilization, 117 

"This brilliant and exquisitely finished group of 
jewelry shows the high level that had been attained 
at the beginning of the first dynasty. It is two 
thousand years older than the jewelry of Dahshur, 
the oldest previously known, and has the greater 
advantage of being carefully examined as it was 
found, and restrung in perfect arrangement. The 
arm of the queen had been broken off by the first 
plunderers and laid in a hole in the wall of the 
tomb, and there remained neglected by four parties 
in ancient and modern times, who successively 
cleared the tomb.'' 

The discoveries made in connection with this 
tomb of Menes, the incineration of the dead, and 
other finds v/hich have recently been made, estab- 
lish the important fact that the Pharaonic Egyptians 
— the Egyptians of history — were immigrants from 
another land. We have come very close to the be- 
ginnings of history, and these discoveries give us 
the following conclusions : We first know Egypt as 
inhabited more than five thousand years B.C., in 
the "prehistoric stone age," by a race with a very 
peculiar and primitive civilization, a very different 
civilization from that of the Pharaonic Egyptians. 
They were a white, blue-eyed Libyan race, far less 
artistic, but in some respects even more skillful 
in mechanical taste and touch, than the historic 
Egyptians. They built brick houses to live in, and 
buried their dead in small chambers sunk in the 
gravels of the water courses, lined with mats and 
roofed over with stone slabs. A temple and many 



Ii8 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

large cemeteries of these aborigines have been 
found, with statues of sacred animals and pottery 
altogether different from that of the Egyptians with 
whose history we are acquainted. Professor Pe- 
trie, who made these discoveries, says : "At first we 
were completely staggered by a class of objects en- 
tirely different from any yet known in Egypt. We 
tried to fit them into every gap in Egyptian history, 
but found that it was impossible to put them before 
3000 B.C. Later discoveries prove that they are 
really as old as 5000 B.C." 

The latest and most important discovery which 
has been made of these aborigines, and which has 
occurred since Professor Petrie made his explora- 
tions, is the mummy of a man which is undoubt- 
edly the oldest known body of a human being. It 
has just been placed in the Egyptian gallery of 
the British Museum. It was found in a grave by 
a wandering Arab, who reported his discovery 
to a British official, and immediately two Egyp- 
tian soldiers were sent to guard it day and night 
until it could be safely removed. This man be- 
longed to that remote race which preceded the his- 
toric Egyptians, and the manner in which he was 
embalmed was altogether different from that em- 
ployed by the Pharaonic Egyptians. His body was 
not bound in linen or cased in any painted coffin, 
but was merely coated with a preparation of bitu- 
men, the Arabic word for which is munita, from 
which the word "mummy" is derived. He was 
buried in a neolithic grave, covered with rude slabs 



Origin of Egyftian Civilization. 119 

of stone, having neolithic pots and flint instruments 
beside him, showing that he belonged to the stone 
age of Eg}^pt. There is no inscription of any kind 
on the pots, knives, or grave, they having been 
made long before the invention of a written lan- 
guage. Certain ancient Egyptian documents give 
the tradition of a race called the Trehennu, who 
had fair skin, red hair, and blue eyes. This man 
has distinctly auburn hair, and has other fea- 
tures which identify him with that long-forgotten 
race. 

About 5000 B.C. there came down the Nile a 
race of conquerors from Babylonia, who brought 
with them wheat and barley (previously unknown), 
the ox, the sheep, and the goat, the beginning of 
writing, and the use of the cylinder and metal tools. 
They were some of the same Accadians or Sumeri- 
ans who preceded the Babylonians in the land of 
Chaldea. Egyptian history and civilization began 
with them, and doubtless part of the work of Menes 
was the subjugation of that race who preceded these 
immigrants and conquerors. The excavations in 
the tombs of Negada show that with the very begin- 
ning of the long series of historic kings headed 
by Menes himself there appears the same highly 
developed civilization, with all the characteristic 
features in language, writing, literature, art, etc., 
which are to be seen in all the Egyptian museums. 
This is why no trace has ever been discovered of 
the steps which led up to the marvelous civilization 
of the old empire. These people carried with them 



120 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

to the land of the Nile the already fully developed 
civilization of Chaldea. 

Dr. Flinders Petrie, who has given the last twenty 
years to Egyptian explorations, and who is the best 
living authority on Egyptology, says that the civ- 
ilization that we find existed in Egypt in its earliest 
history appears elaborate and perfect. After that, 
only slow changes of fashion and taste influenced 
it, and but few discoveries of importance were made 
during thousands of years which ensued. That 
this civilization was imported by an incoming race 
seems most probable; and the dynastic Egyptians 
found already in the country an aboriginal popula- 
tion, whose features, beliefs, and customs differed 
much from their own. 

Professor Hilprecht, of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, the leading archaeologist of this country, 
and to whom we are indebted for many very im- 
portant discoveries in Babylonia, says : " Professor 
Hommel, of Munich, who for several years past has 
been studying the earliest phases of Sumerian lan- 
guage, writing, and mythology in their relation to the 
earliest remnants of civilization in ancient Egypt, 
independently of myself, reached the conclusion 
that the Babylonian civilization is by far older 
than that of the Nile valley, and that the latter 
may be considered to be the offspring or daughter 
of the former. Recently direct proofs have come 
from Egyptian ruins themselves maintaining and 
strengthening the theory as outlined above. The 
extraordinary discoveries of Petrie, Amelineau, and 



Origin of Egyptian Civilization. 121 

de Morgan in Egypt have brought considerable new 
material to light, which seems to decide the vexed 
question almost surely in favor of my own and 
Hommel's views." M. de Morgan, the discoverer 
of the tomb of Menes, in a recent book, draws the 
inevitable conclusion, corroborated by many single 
facts, that, in view of the extraordinary age of Bab- 
ylonian civilization, the only one of the existence 
of which we have positive knowledge, outside of 
the Egyptian, at such an early period, the most 
probable solution of the problem must be that the 
Egyptian civilization had its origin in Babylonia. 

Proofs of the correctness of this theory are con- 
stantly accumulating. Not only may the hiero- 
glyphics of the Egyptians be traced to the pictures 
out of which the cuneiform characters of the Baby- 
lonians were developed, but the elements of the 
Egyptian language itself are contained in the mixed 
vernacular of Babylonia which resulted from the 
fusion of Sumerians and Semites. Another argu- 
ment, apart from considerations of grammar and the 
great number of Sumerian loan-words contained in 
the Egyptian language, is the extensive coincidences 
between the Babylonish and Egyptian systems of 
writing, their religion, and other branches of cul- 
ture. The most ancient Egyptian linguistic docu- 
ments point to an undeniable, though already very 
remote, relationship with the Semitic languages. 
It is also claimed bv Hommel that the principal 
Egyptian deities can be proved identical with those 
of Babylon, from the identity of their attributes, 



122 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

distinctive animals, legends, etc. It has been dem- 
onstrated that the Osiris of Egypt is the Asari of 
the Sumerians, and "that his name is denoted by 
two ideographs, which, both in Egyptian and in 
Sumerian, have the same forms, the same signifi- 
cations, and the same phonetic powers." The 
Assyrians modified this name Asari to "Asshur," 
from which they derived their name, this being 
their chief deity. The symbol of this deity w r as a 
winged circle or disk, with the bird's tail, which 
was never omitted. In this form it strikingly re- 
sembles the Egyptian symbol of Osiris, which is 
also a winged disk, but without the tail, while the 
wings are those of the sparrow hawk, which was 
the sacred bird of the Egyptians, just as the dove 
was that of the Assyrians. 

Another striking fact is that the same mode of 
burial which is now found to have prevailed in 
Egypt in the age of Menes and during the first two 
dynasties was in use in ancient Babylonia. As in 
Egypt nothing perished save by the hand of man, 
there was no reason for burning the dead, and hence 
the custom must have been an importation. And 
this is also proved by the fact that it soon died 
away and gave place to the process of embalming, 
which is a distinctively Egyptian custom. 

It has also been discovered that during the first 
two Egyptian dynasties the use of the seal cylinder 
and of clay as a writing material prevailed. These 
have only been found in the tombs of Menes and of 
his immediate successors, and entirely passed away 



Origin of Egyptian Civilization. 123 

with the close of the sixth dynasty. Such a meth- 
od of writing could never have been invented in 
the valley of the Nile, where stone was plentiful, 
and where the sandy soil was not adapted for re- 
ceiving the impress of the seal. But this v/as the 
Chaldean and Babylonian method of writing down 
to the close of the Assyrian empire ; and while it was 
natural in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, it was 
wholly out of place in Egypt, and hence soon dis- 
appeared. Like cremation, it v/as an importation, 
and was carried into Egypt by the Chaldeans. 

Another characteristic of the early Egyptians, 
which seems to identify them with the Chaldeans, 
is their knowledge of astronomy and their stud}' of 
the stars. Like the ancient Chaldeans, they di- 
vided the year into twelve months, which corre- 
sponded to their twelve constellations, now called 
the signs of the zodiac. Among recent discov- 
eries is that of an "astronomical ceiling " of the 
Egyptians, which represents the various races of 
mankind — the Asiatic being pictured in long robes, 
with feathers on their heads, the east being "the 
beginning of the world. " 

We have here one of the most striking confirma- 
tions of the old Bible declaration that human civ- 
ilization had its beginning in the valley of the Eu- 
phrates. The Babylonian origin of the Pharaonic 
Egyptians, and of the culture they carried with 
them, is a striking vindication of the Old Testa- 
ment narrative, which tells us that it was from the 
plain of Shinar that civilized man was "scattered 



124 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

abroad upon the face of all the earth." No intel- 
ligent man can now dispute that Genesis is right in 
sending us to southern Babylonia for the begin- 
nings of history and of civilized man. 

We have here also a proof of another great truth, 
which all recent archaeological discoveries have 
been verifying, that civilization is an inheritance, 
and not an independent development. Western 
Asia has been the home of civilization as far back 
as we have evidence that it was inhabited by 
man, and in all other parts of the world civiliza- 
tions have been introduced and adopted. No in- 
stance has been found of the savage rising by his 
own spontaneous efforts to culture and civilized 
life. On the contrary, savagery is the result of re- 
trogression and decay. "God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the 
face of the earth; and hath determined the times 
before appointed, and the bounds of their habita- 
tion." (Acts xvii. 26.) 



CHAPTER X. 
Egypt in the Time of Toseph. 

Abraham in Egypt — The Hyksos or Shepherd Kings — Joseph 
Sold in Egypt — The Seven Years' Famine — The Land of 
Goshen. 

It is a most remarkable fact, showing the wonder- 
ful arrangement of Divine Providence, that the be- 
ginning and close of the revelation of God's deal- 
ing with Israel are associated with the highest in- 
tellectual culture of the world. It was Roman 
power which, having absorbed the Greek intellec- 
tual life and culture, destroyed the Jewish national 
life; and when the apostles went forth into the 
Roman world, they could avail themselves of the 
Greek language, then universally spoken, of. Gre- 
cian culture and modes of thinking. What Greece 
and Rome were to the world at the time of Christ, 
that and much more was Egypt when Jacob and 
his sons went down to Joseph and made their home 
in the land of Goshen. 

Two centuries earlier Abraham had gone down 
into Egypt in a time of famine, and had found the 
Hyksos monarchs holding their court at Zoan. 
The Hyksos were a race of Asiatic invaders, who, 
according to Manetho, held possession of Egypt 
for five hundred and eleven years, ruling it from 
their capital of Zoan. They were Semites, and 

0-5) 



126 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

poured into Egypt by the northeast frontier. They 
are known to history by a name which is Egyptian 
— hik S/iasu, "prince of the Shasu or Bedouins. " 
As Greece led her Roman captors into the paths 
of culture and art, so the Hyksos yielded to the in- 
fluences of the superior civilization into which they 
had so rudely forced themselves, and insensibly 
became assimilated to native Egyptian manners and 
modes of life. When Abraham found there these 
men of Semitic blood, speaking a Semitic language, 
he received a cordial welcome and was treated 
w r ell, not only for his wife's sake, but doubtless 
also because of their racial ties (Gen. xii. 16). 

We know really very little about these Hyksos 
Pharaohs, for though they ruled Egypt for more 
than five hundred years in three dynasties, even 
the names of most of the kings who belonged to 
these dynasties are still unknown. It is at present 
the darkest period of Egyptian history, and the 
records of that age still lie buried among the dust- 
heaps of the eastern delta, waiting for the exca- 
vator who shall one day bring them to light. 

Abraham's visit to Egypt was the beginning of 
that connection between Israel and Canaan which 
existed for so many centuries. The scriptural ac- 
count of the incidents which happened while he 
was there gain fresh light by some of the' mon- 
uments and old papyri which have been deciphered. 
A papyrus in the British Museum, known as "The 
Two Brothers," and v/hich is probably the oldest 
work of fiction in existence, shows why Abraham 



Egyjit in the Time of Josef h. 127 

had occasion for fear on account of Sarah. It tells 
of a Pharaoh who sent two armies to take a fair 
woman from her husband and then to murder him. 
Another papyrus, which is now in Berlin, records 
how the wife and children of a foreigner were taken 
from him by a Pharaoh. It is a striking coinci- 
dence that this papyrus dates from about the time 
that the patriarch was in Egypt. There is also a 
picture in one of the tombs of that same period, 
which represents the arrival of a nomad chief, like 
Abraham, with his family and dependents, who 
seek the protection of the prince. He is received 
as a person of distinction, and that which makes 
the coincidence the more striking is that he is evi- 
dently of Semitic descent, wears a " coat of many 
colors," is designated Hyk, or prince, the equiva- 
lent of the modern " sheik," or chief of a tribe, 
and even bears the name of Ab-shak, " father of 
sand," a name bearing a striking resemblance to 
that of Ad-raham, the "father of a multitude." 

When Joseph was sold into Egypt, the court at 
Zoan, where the Hyksos still ruled, had become 
very much like the court of the native princes at 
Thebes. The name Shepherd Kings was applied 
to these rulers, and while shepherds were an abom- 
ination to the native Egyptians (Gen. xlvi. 34), to 
the former they were not at all objectionable, but, 
as being in some sort of kindred origin, were cor- 
dially received. 

Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold, is twice stated 
in the scriptural narrative to be "an Egyptian," 



128 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

and this is proved by his name, which is purely 
Egyptian. Egyptologists resolve it into Pet-p-har, 
" given by Horus," while the name of Potipherah, 
the high priest of On, whose daughter, Asenath, was 
married to Joseph, is Pet-p-ra, " the gift of Ra," 
the sun god. It is curious to find in the Louvre 
both the gods combined in the name Peti-hor-p'ra. 

While no references to Joseph have been found 
in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the monuments of 
Egypt supply us with many illustrations and con- 
firmations of the history of Joseph's life in the 
land of the Nile. There is an Egyptian romance, 
written for Seti II. of the nineteenth dynasty (after 
Joseph's time), which is a remarkable parallel to 
the story of Joseph and his master's wife (Gen. 
xxxix. 7-20). Two brothers, Anpu and Bata, 
lived together. The elder, Anpu, one day sent 
Bata back from the fields into the house to fetch 
some seed; Anpu's wife there made advances to 
him, which he repelled. When Anpu returned 
home in the evening, his wife accused Bata to him 
falsely. Anpu, enraged, at first sought to slay his 
brother, but in the end he became convinced of his 
innocence, and thereupon slew his unfaithful wife. 

In the tomb of Rameses III. there is a represen- 
tation of a royal bakery, in which there are a num- 
ber of figures employed in various processes of 
bread-making, and among them one carrying a 
tray containing rolls of bread upon his head (Gen. 
xl. 16, 17). " Butlers" or "cupbearers," the 
word for both in Hebrew being the same, are rep- 



Egyft i\i ike Time of Josef h, 129 

resented in the tomb of Paheri at El Kab, in the 
act of offering wine to the guests; and Ebers has 
even illustrated from a text found in the temple at 
Edfu, and published by M. Naville, the custom of 
squeezing grapes into water (Gen. xl. 11) for the 
purpose of producing a refreshing beverage. 

The dreams of Pharaoh ( Gen. xli.) are in accord- 
ance with the importance which we learn from the 
inscriptions was attached to dreams both in Egypt 
and in Babylon. A tablet on the breast of the 
great Sphinx commemorates a remarkable dream of 
Thothmes IV. as he lay weary under its shadow; 
and a vision of the god Ptah, appearing in a dream 1 
encouraged Merenptah to attack the Libyans. 
With regard to the Pharaonic dreams, they are 
thoroughly Egyptian in their scene and circum- 
stances. The Nile and flood, and the seven sacred 
kine, are in accord with the religion of the land; 
and the late Canon Cook and others have shown 
that the very words used in the narrative are famil- 
iar Egyptian terms. 

The plan which Joseph adopted of laying up 
corn in storehouses (Gen. xli. 48,49) was an Egyp- 
tian custom, and the "superintendent of the gran-* 
aries" was an important officer of state, whose 
duty it was to see that the granaries were properly 
filled, and who also had to furnish the king annu- 
ally with an "account of the harvests of the south 
and of the north." M. Naville says: "The other 
day I came across a picture which reminded me 
strongly of Joseph and his employment. It has 
9 



130 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

been taken from a tomb. There you see the king 
Amenophis III. sitting on his throne, and before 
him one of his ministers, Chaemha, who seems to 
have had a very high position . He is called ' the chief 
of the granaries of the whole kingdom.' Behind 
him are a great number of officials of different class- 
es, bringing the tribute of the whole land. . . . Be- 
sides, he has this strange title, 'The eyes of the king 
in the towns of the south, and his ears in the prov- 
inces of the north,' which implies that he knew the 
land perfectly ; and that, like Joseph, * he had gone 
throughout all the land of Egypt' (Gen. xli. 46)." 
Famines of long duration, such as Joseph pre- 
dicted, are not unknown in Egypt, though they are 
rare. In a country like Egypt, where rain is al- 
most unknown, the fertility of the fields depends 
upon the annual inundation of the Nile. It is not 
usual for this inundation to fail, even in a single 
year, but for it to fail for seven consecutive years 
is a most unusual and extraordinary event. The 
last recorded seven years' failure of the Nile, and 
a consequent famine, is attested by the Arabian 
historian, El Makrizi, for A.D. 1064-1071, under 
the reign of thekhalif El Mustansir Billah. Ameni, 
an officer of King Usertasen I. of the twelfth dy- 
nasty, who has engraved the history of his life in 
the entrance of his tomb among the cliffs of Beni- 
Hassan, says: " No one was hungry in my days, 
not even in the years of famine. For I had tilled 
all the fields of the district of Mah, up to the south- 
ern and northern frontiers. Thus I prolonged the 



Egyft in the Ti?ne of Joseph. 131 

life of its inhabitants, and preserved the food which 
it produced. No hungry man was in it." The 
sepulchral inscription of a nobleman named Baba 
has been found at El Kab, in Upper Egypt, in which, 
in enumerating his virtues and charitable deeds, he 
says: "I collected corn, as a friend of the harvest 
god; I was watchful at the time of sowing. And 
when a famine arose, lasting many years, I distrib- 
uted corn to the city each year of famine." As 
Baba is supposed to have lived shortly before the 
establishment of the eighteenth dynasty, this would 
agree very well with the time of Joseph; and it is 
not unreasonable to suppose that the famine re- 
ferred to is the same. 

In Genesis xli. 49 it is said : "And Joseph gath- 
ered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until 
he left numbering; for it was without number." A 
very striking parallel to this is in line eleven of the 
great tablet of Abu Simbel: " I will give thee corn 
in abundance, to enrich Egypt in all times; the 
wheat is like the sand of the shore; the granaries 
reach the sky, and the heaps are like mountains." 

It is said that when later "the famine was very 
sore," Joseph "bought all the land of Egypt for 
Pharaoh; for the Eg}^ptians sold every man his 
field, because the famine prevailed over them: so 
the land became Pharaoh's. . . . And Joseph made 
it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that 
Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land 
of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh's." 
(Gen. xlvii. 20, 26.) The change thus brought 



132 Mounds ^ Monuments ) and T;isc?'ifttLGns. 

about in the ownership of the land is substantiated 
by the monuments which show that "the old aris- 
tocracy made way for royal officials; and the 
landed property passed out of the hands of the old 
families into the possession of the crown and of 
the great temples. " The inscriptions do not give 
the particulars respecting the system of land ten- 
ure, or state by whom it was introduced, but in the 
monuments, on which every detail in the daily life 
of the great Ramesside kings of the new empire 
is depicted, we see that the land has entirety passed 
away from the people. Rameses III., in the great 
Harris papyrus, declares himself the proprietor of 
the soil of Egypt. ^ 

Egyptologists are generally agreed that the Pha- 
raoh under whom Joseph ruled was Ra Apepi II., 
the last of the rlyksos kings, the worshiper of Set. 
The name has been found inscribed on the right 
shoulder of the grim and striking sphinxes among 
the ruins of Zoan. We learn from " The Legend 
of the Expulsion of the Hyksos' , that Apepi was 
worsted in a battle with Ra-Sekenen, the prince of 
Thebes. Ra-Sekenen was killed, though his en- 
terprise was not frustrated by his death, but v/as 
taken up by Aahmes, who succeeded in expelling 
the Hyksos, and reestablished the line of purely 
Egyptian kings. 

* The situation of the "land of Goshen," occupied 
under the command of Pharaoh bj^the children of 
Israel (Gen. xlvii. 6), has been fully determined, 
and scholars and explorers are now agreed as to its 



Egypt in the Time of Joseph. 133 

location and limits. In 1884 ^- Naville came acci- 
dentally upon a large village about forty miles 
northeast of Cairo, called Saft-el-Henneh, where 
he observed a monument bearing the name of Nec- 
tanebo, the last of the Pharaohs (367-350 B.C.), 
and which he at once saw was the site of a large 
ancient city, once occupied by the Romans, and 
inclosed by massive walls of crude brick. Exca- 
vating on this spot, he discovered the remains of a 
shrine erected by Nectanebo to the god Sopt, with 
inscriptions which showed that the place on which 
the shrine stood bore the name of Kes. Now an- 
cient hieroglyphic lists of the " JVomes," or ad- 
ministrative districts of Egypt, mention Kesem as 
the twentieth nome of Lower Egypt, and state that 
its religious capital was Pa-Sopt. Kesem is only 
the older and fuller form of Kes, and in Kesem we 
have unmistakably the Greek Gesem, and the He- 
brew Goshen, the land of the Israelitish bondage. 
The Septuagint has "Gesem of Arabia," instead of 
Goshen, and we learn from Ptolemy that "x\rabia" 
was the name of a nome in Lower Egypt, of which 
Goshen was undoubtedly a part. M. Naville says 
that the Goshen of the time of Joseph may be 
roughly reckoned as having its northern boundary 
from about the present railway junction of Zaga- 
zig, very near the ancient Bubastis, nearly to Tel- 
el-Kebir, and that it extends southward somewhat 
farther than Belbeis/ " The traveler who leaves 
the station of Zagazig and journeys toward Tel-el- 
Kebir crosses, in all its width, what was the old 



134 Mounds , Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

land of Goshen. This part of the country is still 
particularly fruitful; it abounds in line villages, 
the sheiks, and even the common inhabitants, of 
which are generally very well off." 

Among the scraps of correspondence contained 
in the celebrated Anastasi papyri is a statement 
which is of very great interest in connection with 
this discovery of the land of Goshen. An officer an- 
nounces to Merenptah, the Pharaoh of the exodus: 
''The country around was not cultivated, but left as 
pasture for cattle because of the strangers. It was 
abandoned since the time of the ancestors, that the 
tribes of the Shasu (nomad Asiatics) might feed 
their cattle in the domain of the Pharaoh, who is 
the good sun of all the world." Were not these 
"strangers" the Iraelites? 

As the traveler passes on the railroad from Ismai- 
lia to Cairo, he is thrilled with the memories of the 
past as he realizes that every foot of ground through 
which he is passinghasbeen consecrated by thepres- 
ence of God's peculiar people in their cruel bond- 
age. The soil has been enriched with their sweat 
and blood, and the monuments and storehouses 
were built of the brick madeby their bleedinghands. 
When that land reveals all its secrets, the pitiful 
story told in Exodus, of the suffering people who 
went forth with breaking hearts to gather stubble, 
will stand out even more realistically, and we willun- 
der stand more fully how " they made their lives bit- 
ter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and 
in all manner of service in the field" (Ex. i. 14). 



CHAPTER XI. 

RAMESES II. AND THE OPPRESSION. 

Rameses I., the Founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty — Seti I. — 
Rameses II. — The City of Pithom — A Sermon in Brick — 
The Mummy of Rameses — Moses — "The Travels 01 the 
Mohar." 

For nearly four hundred years Israel remained in 
Goshen in peace and prosperity, learning the arts 
and industries of ancient Egypt. We cannot doubt 
but that the Israelites became versed in the litera- 
ture of the land of their adoption ; and at that time 
the religion of Egypt contained many truths which 
they held in common with Israel. But Egypt had 
now given to the children of Israel all that it was 
necessary for them to have. The nation had 
grown to manhood, and the time had come for 
them to go forth into the land which God had 
promised to their fathers. Their long years of 
tranquillity were suddenly interrupted by an era of 
oppression which finally resulted in the exodus. 

Rameses I. was the founder of the nineteenth 
dynasty, and he was succeeded by his son Seti I. 
This new dynasty represented a spirit hostile to 
everything Semitic, and the enemies on the north- 
eastern frontier were beginning to array themselves 
against the Egyptians; the Khita or Hittites were 
gathering, and growing bold enough to threaten 
invasion. Seti discovered in the Israelites within 

(■35) 



136 Si founds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

his borders a source of real danger should these 
Canaanitish nations invade the land, and so he said: 
"Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they 
multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there fall- 
eth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, 
and fight against us, and so get them up out of the 
land." (Ex. i. 10.) Then began the hard bond- 
age and bitter toil to which the Israelites were sub- 
jected. After the death of Seti I., Rameses II. 
ascended the throne, and was even harder and 
more cruel than his father. In the sixth year of 
Rameses, Moses was born, and grew up as the son 
of Pharaoh's daughter. 

Rameses II. was the Alexander of ancient Egypt. 
He was possessed by the same insatiable thirst for 
conquest, by the same storm-driven restlessness. 
Ever on the march, and ever victorious, he con- 
quered almost the entire known world of his time. 
It was his magnificent boast that he planted the 
frontiers of Egypt where he pleased. He lived to 
wear the crown for sixty-seven years, in wonder- 
ful accordance with the statement that " after a 
long time the king of Egypt died " (Ex. ii. 23). 

The monuments of this great king still cover the 
soil of Egypt and Nubia in almost countless num- 
bers, and show him to have been the greatest builder 
of all the Pharaohs. There is not, says Mariette, a 
ruin in Egypt or Nubia that does not bear his name. 
He completed the temple of Luxor at Thebes, and 
carved out the marvelous rock-cut temples at Abou- 
Simbel. In the land of Goshen he restored and 



Rameses II. and the Oppression. 137 

beautified the vast temple of Zoan-Tanis, and 
founded towns, dug canals, and filled the land with 
colossi, sphinxes, statues, and other monuments. 
Of the thirty-two obelisks which yet exist in Egypt 
or elsewhere, twenty-one were either in whole or 
in part due to him; and of the eight .temples w r hich 
still remain in the ruins of Thebes, there is only 
one which he did not complete or build entirely. 

An old writing on the back of a papyrus, appar- 
ently of the date of Seti L, brings vividly before us 
a picture of the brickmaking, which was part of 
the labors of the Hebrews. "Twelve masons," 
says the writer, " besides men who are brickmold- 
ers in their town, have been brought here to work 
at house building. Let them make their number of 
bricks each day. They are not to relax their tasks 
at the new house. It is thus I obey the command 
given me by my master." These twelve masons 
and these brickmakers, thus taken from their own 
towns to help build this house, at a fixed rate of 
task work daily, may not have been Hebrews, but 
their case illustrates exactly the details of Hebrew 
slavery given in Exodus. It is, moreover, a strik- 
ing fact, in connection with the narrative of Moses, 
that a great part of the constructions of Rameses II. 
were of brick, as seen to this day in the mounds 
which hide their ruins. 

One of the most remarkable verifications of the 
scriptural account of the oppression of the Israel- 
ites during the reign of Rameses II. is found in the 
recently exhumed city of Pithom. Along the line 



138 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

of the railroad between Suez and Cairo are some 
great mounds which Lepsius, forty years ago, said 
was the site of one of the treasure cities which it is 
said in the first chapter of Exodus the Israelites 
built for Pharaoh. A few years ago M. Naville 
began to excavate in these mounds, and found under 
them a peribolos wall, the site of a temple, a camp, 
the ruins of a city, and a series of most curious 
subterraneous structures. Inscriptions found on 
bricks, on walls, on tablets, on statues, and on coins 
showed that it was the site of an ancient city whose 
religious name was Pithom, while its civil name 
was Succoth ; that the place was a great storehouse, 
and that the founder of the city was Rameses II. 
The buildings were all of brick, and some of these 
bricks are in the British Museum, and in the Metro- 
politan Museum of New York, and are usually from 
four to eight inches square and one and a half to 
two inches thick. They are unbaked, but very 
hard. Under the city were great subterranean 
store chambers, occupying almost the entire area, 
just such as Moses says the children of Israel built. 
These are solidly built square chambers of various 
sizes, divided by massive partition walls about ten 
feet in thickness, without doors or any kind of com- 
munication, evidently intended to be filled and emp- 
tied from the top by means of trapdoors and lad- 
ders. The building material consisted of large 
bricks, which were formed of Nile mud, pressed 
in a wooden mold and dried in the sun. They were 
also bedded in mortar, contrary to the usual meth- 



Ramcscs II. and the Oppression. 139 

od in the delta, which was to bed them in mud, 
which dries immediately and holds almost as tena- 
ciously as mortar. This recalls the story in Exo- 
dus that Pharaoh's overseers "made the children 
of Israel to serve with rigor; and made their lives 
bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick" 
(Ex. i. 13, 14). ^ 

What is especially wonderful in confirmation of 
the Bible story, and which proves that this is one 
of the very treasure cities that the Israelites built, 
is that the bricks are of three qualities. In the lower 
courses, and for some distance up, they are mixed 
with chopped straw; higher up reeds are substi- 
tuted for the straw — the same kind of reeds which 
grow to this day in the bed of the old Pharaonic 
canal, and which are called "stubble" in the Bi- 
ble. In the upper courses, there are neither reeds 
nor straw, the bricks consisting of the Nile mud 
only, with no binding substance whatever. 

Here we have the whole pathetic Bible story be- 
fore us in solid evidence. "And the children of 
Israel sighed by reason of their bondage, and they 
cried, and their cry came up unto God. And the 
Lord said, I have surely seen the afflictions of my 
people which are in Egypt, and have heard their 
cry by reason of their taskmasters ; for I know their 
sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them. 
And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, and told 
Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let 
my people go. And Pharaoh said, Who is the 
Lord, that I should obey his voice? And Pha- 



140 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

raoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of 
the people and their officers, saying, Ye shall no 
more give the people straw to make brick, as here- 
tofore : let them go and gather straw for themselves. 
And the tale of bricks, which they did make here- 
tofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not di- 
minish aught thereof. So the people were scat- 
tered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt 
to gather stubble instead of straw. Then the offi- 
cers of the children of Israel came and cried 
unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou 
thus with thy servants? There is no straw given 
unto thy servants, and they say unto us, Make 
brick. But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle. 
Go therefore now and work; for there shall no 
straw be given you, yet ye shall deliver the tale of 
bricks." (Ex. ii. 23; iii. 7, 8; v. 1, 2, 6-8, 12, 

Shakespeare tells us of " sermons in stones," but 
here we have a sermon in bricks, as well as a mar- 
velous ocular demonstration of the correctness of 
the biblical record. 

While the site of Rameses, the other treasure 
city, has never been identified, its construction is 
mentioned in two papyri now in the Leyden col- 
lection, in which a scribe named Kanitzir reports 
that he has " followed the instructions which my 
lord gave me, namely, to give food to the soldiers 
as well as to the Asiatics who bring the stones 
to the great town of Pving Rameses-Meramen." 
There also exists a papyrus letter, beginning, " The 



Ramescs II. and ike Oppression. 141 

clerk Panbesa salutes his lord," which contains a 
poetic description of the town, c the sentences, as is 
usual in Egyptian poems, having red dots placed 
above them to show the lines. "I found it flour- 
ishing in good things without a rival, like the foun- 
dations of Thebes, the abode of felicity. Its mead- 
ows are filled with all good things, it is well pro- 
visioned daily. Its pools are filled with fish, its 
ponds with fowl ; its fields are verdant with grass." 
The finding of the mummy of Rameses II. seems 
like a romance, and yet it lies to-day in the Boulak 
Museum at Cairo, the most valuable of all the price- 
less treasures which are there to be seen. The 
story of this discovery is full of interest. Four 
Arabs had found a hidden tomb among the rocks of 
Deir-el-Bahari, near Thebes, in which there were 
forty mummies of kings, queens, princesses, and 
priests. They kept the secret for a number of 
years, and sold valuable relics to tourists. Some 
of these antiquities were recognized by the officials 
of the National Museum at Boulak as belonging to 
the dynasty of Rameses II., of his father Scti, and 
of his grandfather Rameses I. Even scarabees 
bearing the cartouch of Rameses II. had been 
shown by innocent purchasers. It was suspected 
by the officials that some one had discovered the 
mummies of a number of royal personages which 
had been found missing from the previously discov- 
ered tombs where they had been placed at death. 
Secret detectives were put on the track, and final- 
ly one of the four brothers who had made the lucky 



142 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

find made a clean breast of the whole matter. The 
great pile of mummies that had lain hidden for more 
than three thousand years were at last brought to 
light, and among them were the mummies of Seti 
I., of Rameses II., and of Thermuthis-Neferari, 
his daughter, who saved the infant Moses and 
brought him up as her own son. In 1881 the mum- 
mies were taken to Boulak. By written papyri 
preserved with the mummies, and markings on the 
cases and on the bandages, they were easily iden- 
tified. In 1886 the mummy of Rameses II. was 
unbandaged in the presence of the khedive and an 
august assemblage, and upon the original sere- 
cloth, next to the body, there was an inscription 
in ink by the high priest, saying that he made the 
funeral oration over Rameses the Great, whose 
body was therein inclosed. 

Among all the relics of the past which have been 
brought to light, there is nothing so thrilling as to 
look into the face of that great Egyptian king, the 
Sesostris of the Greeks, who had looked upon 
Moses when a babe, and who, before Israel became 
a nation, had "made their lives bitter with hard 
bondage." He lies in his richly decorated coffin 
with the original mummy cloths still around his 
body, each hand holding a scepter, and the face 
well preserved. It is a striking countenance, with 
the high cheek bones, full lips, and prominent nose 
of the Egyptians. 

The name Moses has been proved to be of 
Egyptian derivation. When Jochebed brought the 



Rameses II. and the Offa'cssion. 143 

child back to the princess, Pharaoh's daughter, the 
latter gave her adopted son the Egyptian name 
"Moses," which appears in several of the old 
Egyptian papyri, among others as that of one of 
the royal princes. The name is given in Exodus 
as meaning "Drawn out from the water" (Ex. ii. 
10) ; and this is corroborated by the fact that the 
words mo and s/ii, respectively, mean still, in Cop- 
tic, "water" and "to take." There is no question 
but that it is a Hebraized form of an Egyptian 
name, the original form having been Mesu, which 
often appears in Egyptian writings, and was writ- 
ten "Mosis" by the Greeks. 

The allusion in Ps. lxxviii. 12 to the "mar- 
velous things" done "in the field of Zoan" is 
doubtless a reference to the deliverance of Moses, 
and possibly locates the very place where this inci- 
dent occurred. Zoan was the ancient Avaris, the 
capital of the shepherd kings, which the new dy- 
nasty had taken from them, and, although Thebes 
was the capital of the new dynasty, Zoan (Tanis 
or San, as it is now called) was a favorite residence 
of Rameses. It lay in the eastern boundary of 
Goshen, and contained the only one of the ancient 
royal Egyptian palaces situated on an arm of the 
Nile which was not infested by crocodiles, and 
where the princess therefore could bathe. One of 
the Egyptian monuments has a striking illustration 
of the scene described in the scriptural account of 
the rescue of Moses. There is a picture of a prin- 
cess bathing in the river with four of her maidens 



144 Mounds^ Monuments ^ and Inscriptions. 

attending upon her, just like the daughter of Pha- 
raoh in the story of Moses. 

One of the most interesting records which have 
come down to us from the reign of Rameses II. is 
a papyrus in which a military officer, called a mo- 
har ^ tells of his travels through Palestine. It is 
called "The Travels of the Mohar," and the tour 
was made during the latter part of the reign of 
Rameses, so that the account gives some idea of 
the condition of Canaan just before the exodus. 
He journeyed as far north as Aleppo in a chariot, 
and tells how he was robbed one night, and that 
his own groom, or " muleteer," joined the bandits. 
He gives a list of the places he visited, among 
which were the Phoenician cities of Gebal, famous 
for its shrine of Ashtoreth, Beirut, Sarepta, Sidon, 
and Tyre, which he says was built on an island in 
the sea, drinking water being conveyed to it in 
boats. Hamath, Tabor, Megiddo, Joppa, and 
Gaza were also visited; and he tells about Joppa 
(the modern Jaffa) being surrounded with gardens 
of date palms, instead of which there are now 
beautiful orange groves. The mohar says that in 
one place he had to " drive along the edge of a 
precipice, on the slippery height, over a depth of 
two thousand cubits, full of rocks and bowlders" ; 
while at another time his chariot was broken in 
pieces by driving over a slippery path, and was 
repaired by "the iron workers" at the nearest 
smithy, which shows that at that early date Pales- 
tine had many places at which iron was forged. 



Ramcses II. and the Oppression. 145 

No details of the early life of Moses are given in 
the Scripture, save the declaration of Stephen that 
he was "exceeding fair/ ' and that he " was learned 
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians " (Acts vii. 20, 
22). Tradition says that he was educated at the 
great Temple of the Sun at On, the chief univer- ♦ 
sity of Egypt, as well as of the ancient world. 
Heliopolis, or On, was one of the most ancient of 
the Egyptian cities, and was famous on two ac- 
counts — it was a great seat of learning, and it was 
the principal center of the worship of the sun. It 
has been called both the Oxford and the Canterbury 
of Egypt, and it was at this university that Plato 
and Herodotus afterwards studied. Magnificent 
buildings, lofty obelisks, splendid colonnades, and 
long avenues of colossal sphinxes made this one of 
the four great cities of ancient Egypt. Close by 
the great temple was the sacred Spring of the Sun, 
a rare sight in Egypt, and therefore the more pre- 
cious, and probably the original cause of the selec- 
tion of this remote corner of Egypt for so famous 
a sanctuary. But buildings, colonnades, sphinxes, 
and temples are now all gone, and a solitary obe- 
lisk, the Egyptian petrifaction of the sunbeam, . 
which once stood in front of the great Temple of 
the Sun, rises in the midst of a field of wheat, and 
is the sole remnant of its former splendors. 
10 



CHAPTER XII. 
The Ten Plagues of Egypt. 

Menephtah I., the Pharaoh of the Exodus — The First Egyptian 
Inscription with the Name " Israel " on It — The Nile Turned 
into Blood— The Frogs— The Lice— The Beetles— The Mur- 
rain — The Boils — The Storm of Darkness — The Locusts — 
The Great Sand Storm — Death of the Firstborn — Passage 
Through the Red Sea. 

Rameses II., after reigning nearly seventy years, 
and leaving many survivors of his immense family 
of one hundred and seventy children, was suc- 
ceeded by his thirteenth son, Menephtah I. Men- 
ephtah had reached the age of sixty when he as- 
cended the throne, and he held his court at vari- 
ous places in Lower Egypt — at Memphis, On, and 
Zoan or Tanis, where monuments bearing his name 
still exist, showing that it was at Zoan Moses met 
him (Ps. lxxviii. 43). Egyptologists generally 
agree that Menephtah is the Pharaoh of the 
exodus. 

v Until 1896 no mention whatever of the Israelites 
had been found upon the Egyptian monuments, 
but in the winter of that year Professor Petrie made 
a discovery, the importance of which to biblical 
students can hardly be overestimated. On the 
western bank of the Nile, at Thebes, he disinterred 
the ruined temple of Menephtah. It had long been 
supposed that this temple was erected by Ameno- 

(146) 



The Ten Plagues of Egyjt>t. 147 

phis III., of the eighteenth dynasty. But Professor 
Petrie's excavations revealed the startling fact that 
Menephtah dismantled the temple of Amenophis, 
and used the stones he brought from it to build his 
own sanctuary. Among these stones was a large 
slab or stele of granite, ten feet in length and five 
feet wide, upon which Amenophis had given a his- 
tory of his architectural labors. Menephtah built 
the stele into the wall of his temple, with its in- 
scribed side turned inward, and upon the unin- 
scribed side of it he engraved a new inscription of 
his own, which contains the first record that has 
been found on any Egyptian monument that in any 
form makes mention of the Israelites." 

It had long been known that Menephtah, in his 
fifth year, had gained at Porsopis a great victory 
over the Libyans, and he gives the account of this 
success in an inscription on the walls of Karnak. 
The inscription on this stele is a description of the 
same event, and consists of a hymn of triumph 
composed by some court poet. The stele is now 
at the Gizeh Museum, and this is the passage in 
which the reference to the Israelites occurs : " Van- 
quished is the land of the Libyans, the land o^ the 
Hittites is tranquilized ; captured is the land of Pa- 
Kana'na [Canaan] with all violence; carried away 
is the land of Ashkelon; overpowered is the land 
of Gezer; the land of Innuam [in the north of Pal- 
estine] is brought to nothing; the Israelites are 
minished so that they have no seed ; the land of 
Khar is become like the widows of Lg} r pt ; all the 



148 Mounds , Monuments , and Inscriptions. 

world is at peace. Everyone that was a marauder 
hath been subdued by the king Menephtah, who 
gives life like the sun every day." 

One important fact with regard to this inscrip- 
tion is, that whereas all other places or peoples 
have the determinative for "country," Israel has 
the determinative for "men"; showing that the 
reference is not to the land of Israel, but to Israel 
as a tribe or people^ whether migratory or on the 
march. 

Another interesting point is the striking parallel- 
ism between the declaration that "the Israelites 
are minished, so that they have no seed," and the 
statement recorded in Exodus i. 10-22 to the effect 
that Pharaoh ordered his people to "deal wisely" 
with the children of Israel "lest they multiply," 
and that the midwives were commanded to kill all 
the male children. 

This inscription is an additional confirmation of 
the theory that Menephtah is the Pharaoh of the 
exodus. This theory is also supported by the tes- 
timony of Manetho, the Egyptian historian, who 
has left us the Egyptian legend of the expulsion of 
the Israelites out of Egypt, and who ascribes the 
event to Menephtah' s reign. 

Tanis was the scene of the plagues by which 
Pharaoh was at last compelled to yield to the de- 
mands of Moses. On one of the walls of the great 
temple at Karnak, there is a plan of Tanis made 
in the time of Seti I., grandfather of Menephtah, 
before it had been enlarged and beautified by 



The Ten Plagues of .Egypt. 149 

Rameses II. The Tanis branch of the Nile flows 
through the city and its suburbs, and is crossed by 
a bridge. 

One of the most interesting results of recent in- 
vestigations has been to show that the ten plagues 
which God sent upon Egypt in order that Pharaoh 
might let the children of Israel go are such as 
would naturally come upon the country, and, as a 
matter of fact, did come in former times ; the mi- 
raculous element consisting not in the actual occur- 
rences, but in the fact that so many calamities suc- 
ceeded each other so rapidly. The ten plagues of 
Egypt have always been considered among the 
most remarkable miracles of the Bible, and those 
who could not understand miracles have found it 
very difficult to accept them. But recent investi- 
gations have shown that in performing these mira- 
cles God did so in accordance with a principle 
which we find to obtain everywhere in Scripture — 
that is, to follow the lines of nature just as far as 
possible. The plagues were miraculous; yet not 
so much in themselves as in the time, the manner, 
and the measure in which they came upon Egypt. 
Manetho, the Egyptian historian, says that they 
lasted thirteen years; but the Bible account indi- 
cates clearly that they followed each other at inter- 
vals of a few weeks, or months at most. 

There was a regular arrangement and steady 
progress in these plagues as they went on to their 
culmination. There were really only nine, the 
tenth "stroke" being the commencement of the 



150 Afoundsy Afonumcnls, and Inscriptions, 

judgment which Jehovah was to inflict on the 
Egyptians. The first three were in connection 
with that river and soil which formed the boast of 
Egypt, and the chief objects of its worship. The 
remaining six came exclusively upon the Egyptians. 
The first plague was the turning of the water of 
the Nile into blood. Early in the morning, ac- 
cording to the formal visit made each day at sun- 
rise when the river is beginning to rise, Pharaoh, 
leading a religious procession composed of magi- 
cians, wise men, guards, and courtiers, goes down 
to the river to offer unto its waters the customary 
divine worship. Moses meets him with the mes- 
sage of God. On his refusal to listen, Moses 
smites, as he had threatened, the waters with the 
rod of God, and the Nile, in all its branches, canals, 
cisterns, and reservoirs, becomes red like blood. 
While this was not a very usual occurrence, yet 
it was neither the first nor the last time that it has 
happened. This change of color in the Nile is 
said to have been witnessed several times in the 
historic period, and is due to the presence of small 
cryptogamic plants and infusoria from the swamps 
whose waters run into the river. The supernatural 
character of the event lay in its suddenness, in its 
appearance at the command of Moses, and in the 
altered qualities of the water. For seven days the 
river god of Egypt was thus rebuked before the 
God of Israel, for the Nile was in the strictest sense 
regarded as divine, and was worshiped under a 
variety of names. A hymn as old as the days of 



The Ten Plagues of Egypt. 151 

Moses, still preserved, shows how deep was the 
reverence of the Egyptians for this representative 
of their deity • 

O Nile, hymns are sung to thee on the harp; 

Offerings are made to thee: oxen are slain to thee; 

Great festivals are kept for thee: fowls are sacrificed to thee. 

Incense ascends unto heaven: 

Oxen, bulls, fowls are burned! 

Mortals, extol him! and ye cycle of gods! 

His son (the Pharaoh) is made lord of all 

To enlighten all Egypt. 

Shine forth, shine forth, O Nile, shine forth! 

The second plague — that of the frogs — came 
from the same sacred river, and, like all the others, 
directly assailed Egyptian idolatry ; for Heki — " the 
driver away of frogs" — a female deity, had the 
head of a frog, as also had the god Ptah, worshiped 
in southern Egypt as the wife of Khaoum, the god 
of the cataracts of the Nile. Plutarch says that 
the frog was the emblem of the sun, and it was con- 
nected with the most ancient forms of nature wor- 
ship in the country at large. It was embalmed and 
honored with burial at Thebes. 

• The Rev. Thomas Nicol says that when in Egypt 
in 1884 he had " the opportunity of seeing in the 
house of Judge Barringer, of Alexandria, the Amer- 
ican Judge of Appeals in the International Tribu- 
nals, a huge alabaster frog which had been found 
in the ruins of Sanis. It seemed natural to connect 
this creature with the plagues and with the ancient 
worship of the Egyptians. In the conflagration of 
1882 the Judge's house in Alexandria was burned 



152 Mounds, 3f ointments, and Inscriptions. 

down, and the frog, with many other valuable an- 
tiques, went into the flames. When the city was 
taken possession of by British troops, the Judge 
went to ascertain what havoc had been wrought on 
his house, and found his frog, purified and bright- 
ened by its fiery bath, alone remaining of all his 
valuables. It is now in the museum of Yale Uni- 
versity, to which it has been presented by Judge 
Barringer." 

It frequently happens, when the Nile and its ca- 
nals are full, in the height of the inundation, that the 
abounding moisture quickens inconceivable myr- 
iads of frogs and toads, which swarm everywhere. 
How intolerable such a visitation may be, we see 
by the story which is told by Phcenius, a disciple 
of Aristotle, concerning the Pceonians and Dar- 
danians. "In Poeonia and Dardania," he says, 
"there appeared once suddenly such a multitude 
of frogs that they filled the houses and the streets. 
Therefore — as killing them or shutting the doors 
was of no avail, as even the vessels were full of 
them, the water infested, and all food uneatable; 
as they could scarcely set their foot upon the ground 
without treading on heaps of them, and as they 
were greatly vexed by the smell of the great num- 
bers which died — they fled from that region alto- 
gether. " Similar tales are related by Diodorus 
and Pliny. 

The third plague was not exactly what we call 
"lice," but rather small insects which penetrate 
everywhere and cause the most intense inconven- 



The Ten Plagues of Egyft. 153 

ience. In the margin of the Revised Version the 
word "sand-fiies" is used, and the scriptural state- 
ment is that "all the dust of the land" was turned 
into these pests. Sir S. Baker says, "At certain 
seasons it is as if the very dust of the land were 
turned into lice," and describes the lice in question 
as "a sort of tick, not larger than a grain of sand, 
which, when filled with blood, expands to the size 
of a hazelnut." The soil of Egypt was as sacred 
as everything else in the valley of the Nile, for it 
was worshiped as Seb — father of the gods. Hence, 
this "stroke" was terribly sacrilegious to them, 
not only because the soil was polluted, but it un- 
fitted them for appearance in public and for reli- 
gious worship. They could not dare to carry such 
impurity into a temple, and to the priests especially 
it would be a terrible visitation. 

This sudden and terrible plague was, however, 
in accordance with what still occurs at times in 
Egypt. "When the inundation has arisen," says 
Osburn, "above the level of the canals and chan- 
nels, and is rapidly flowing over the entire surface, 
the fine dust or powder into which the mud of last 
year's overflow is triturated, and with which the 
fields are entirely covered, presents a very extraor- 
dinary phenomenon. Immediately on its being 
moistened with the waters, gnats and flies innu- 
merable burst from their pupae, and spring into 
perfect existence. The eggs that produce them 
were laid in the retiring waters of the former flood. 
They have matured in the interval, and vivify in- 



154 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

stantaneously on the dust-absorbing moisture 
enough to discolor it. As the flood advances 
slowly onward, a black line of living insects on its 
extreme verge moves with it." 

The fourth plague was another visitation of in- 
sects, of a different kind, but equally terrible. 
Pharaoh had again gone forth to the river early in 
the morning (Ex. viii. 20), probably with a pro- 
cession, in order to open the solemn festival which 
was held one hundred and twenty days after the 
first rise of the Nile (about the end of October or 
early in November). Moses met him and said: 
"If thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will 
send the 9 arob upon thee, and upon thy servants, 
and upon thy people; and the houses of the Egyp- 
tians shall be full of the 9 aro5, and also the ground 
whereon they are "(Ex. viii. 21). The word trans- 
lated "swarms of flies" would be more correctly 
rendered "swarms of beetles." There is in Egypt 
a species of beetle which from time to time appears 
suddenly in great multitudes, and constitutes a 
plague of a very marked character. "They in- 
flict," says Kalisch, " very painful bites with their 
jaws; gnaw and destroy clothes, household furni- 
ture, leather, and articles of every kind, and either 
consume or render unavailable all eatables." The 
scarabasus, which represented this beetle, was the 
most sacred symbol of the Egyptian religion, and 
it was therefore unlawful to destroy them, and their 
ravages had to be submitted to unresistingly. He 
who crushed a beetle was supposed to crush a god, 



The Ten Plagues of Egyft. 155 

and hence, though they swarmed into the houses, 
even Pharaoh's palace not being exempt from their 
intrusion, and destroyed the produce of the land, 
the Egyptians did not dare to kill them, and had to 
" suffer and be still." This beetle, or scarabceus, 
was sculptured on every monument, painted on 
every tomb and on every mummy chest, engraved 
on gems, worn round the neck as an amulet, and 
honored in ten thousand images of every size and 
of all materials. That this insect, which they con- 
sidered the type of creative power, should be mul- 
tiplied into a plague, was a fearful blow at their 
idolatry. 

The fifth plague was a murrain of a very griev- 
ous kind which fell upon all the animals, so that 
"all the cattle of Egypt died." It is said that up 
to the present time murrains frequently break out 
after the subsidence of the inundation, and are 
sometimes very fatal. In 1786 the rinderpest al- 
most exterminated the cattle of Egypt, and in 1842 
great numbers were swept away by a similar dis- 
ease. In 1863 a murrain began in November and 
was at its height in December, about the time when 
this plague took place. Again in 1866 nearly the 
whole of the herds were destroyed. 

This plague touched the honor of the Egyptian 
religion in one of its tenderest points, for the cow 
and the ox were sacred to Isis and Osiris, and the 
ram was the living symbol of the great god Amon. 
The goat was worshiped at Mendes and the ram 
at Thebes. No greater grief could come to the 



156 Mounds, Monuments , and Inscriptions. 

Egyptians than when any of these sacred animals 
died. Vast numbers of them dying at once, as 
these did, was doubtless considered a great na- 
tional calamity, for "upon their gods the Lord ex- 
ecuted judgments" (Num. xxxiii. 4). 

The sixth plague was the first personal stroke 
that came to the Egyptians. Handfuls of ashes 
were. taken from the furnaces and sprinkled to- 
ward heaven in the sight of Pharaoh; and wher- 
ever these ashes fell they bred disease and caused 
boils which produced pain and suffering. 

In various Egyptian towns sacred to Set or Ty- 
phon, the god of evil, red-haired and light-com- 
plexioned men who were foreigners were annually 
offered in sacrifice to this hideous idol. After be- 
ing burned alive on a high altar, their ashes were 
scattered in the air by the priests, who believed 
that they would avert evil from all parts of the 
country whither they were blown. But these ashes, 
which were thrown into the air by Moses, carried 
blains and boils on the people wherever they fell. It 
may be that Tacitus referred vaguely to this when 
he said : " Many authors agree that a plague which 
made the body hideous having broken out in Egypt, 
the kingBocchoris, on the counsel of the oracle of 
Ammon, from which he had asked what he should 
do, was ordered to purge the kingdom of those thus 
afflicted, and to send them away to other countries, 
as hateful to the gods." Contagious diseases are 
said in an old Egyptian document to have been 
frequent in December. 



The Ten Plagues of Egyft. 157 

The practice of throwing ashes into the air to 
create a plague still prevails in the East. It is said 
that in India, when magicians pronounce an impre- 
cation on an individual, a village, or a country, 
they take the ashes of cow dung from a common 
fire and throw them into the air, saying to the ob- 
jects of their displeasure, Such a sickness, or such 
a curse, shall surely come on you. 

The seventh plague was a terrible storm of thun- 
der and lightning, accompanied by hail. Josephus 
says it was " a hail, not only such as the climate of 
Egypt had never previously witnessed, but such as 
had not even been experienced, in time of winter 
or at the point of spring, in those northern and arc- 
tic lands which were accustomed to the visitation." 
This was the only plague which was not in accord- 
ance with phenomena with which the Egyptians 
were acquainted. 

The eighth plague took the dreaded form of an 
invasion of locusts, which was one of the heaviest 
calamities that can happen to one of those Eastern 
countries. Though only one reference has been 
found to their ravages in the native records, yet it 
is certain that Egypt must always have been sub- 
ject to their incursions, since the adjacent countries 
of Syria and Arabia are special homes of the locust. 
It was from far-off Arabia that this great swarm of 
locusts came, more grievous than any similar visit- 
ation had ever been, in that every green thing in 
Egypt was destroyed, save what was in the land of 
Goshen. 



158 Mounds , Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

The description given in Exodus (x. 14, 15) is 
in full accord with accounts written by travelers. 
It is said that they always advance in a straight 
line, and leaving behind them the countless germs 
of future swarms, they devour everything green 
that comes in their way. Their numbers exceed 
computation: the Hebrews called them "the count- 
less," and the Arabs knew them as "the darkeners 
of the sun." 

The ninth plague was more dreadful than any 
that had preceded it. An intense darkness cov- 
ered the whole land for three days, during which 
men could not see each other. " Neither rose any 
from his place for three days." This was doubt- 
less the natural phenomenon of the Khamsin wind, 
which was, however, in this case greatly aggra- 
vated. This great sand storm frequently occurs in 
Egypt soon after the vernal equinox, blowing from 
the equator toward the north. It is literally as 
described in the Scriptures, "a darkness which 
may be felt" (Ex. x. 21), for the air, charged 
with electricity, draws up the fine dust and the 
coarser particles of sand till the light of the sun is 
hid, the heavens are covered, and the floating dust 
and sand enter every apartment, pervade every 
pore, and find their way through the closed win- 
dows and doors. It is said that sometimes these 
vast whirlwinds of sand in the desert bury entire 
caravans. Herodotus says that one of these sand 
storms once overwhelmed the entire army of Cam- 
byses, sent against Amon, so completely that it 



The Ten Plagues of Egypt. 159 

disappeared as if swallowed up by the waves of the 
sea. It is always attended with a thickness of the 
air, through which the sun sheds only at best a dim 
yellow light, this often passing into complete dark- 
ness. The people in the towns and villages during 
these storms shut themselves up in their houses or 
go into underground cellars, while those who are 
caught in the desert dig holes in the earth or hide 
themselves in caves or pits until the storm is over. 
An Arab chronicler, about the end of the eleventh 
century, records a great storm accompanied by 
darkness so intense that it was thought the end of 
the world was at hand. So that the account given 
in Exodus is a graphic description of what we know 
often occurs in Egypt. 

The Egyptian tragedy culminated in the death 
of all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, "from 
the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne 
[that is, who reigned with him], unto the firstborn 
of the captive that was in the dungeon. " A strik- 
ing confirmation of the early death of Menephtah' s 
only son, who was called Seti II., has been found 
upon the monuments. There are inscriptions 
which tell how Menephtah came to the throne 
when an old man, and that he had a son of his old 
age who * * governed Egypt in behalf of his father,' ' 
corroborating the statement in Exodus that he f ' sat 
on his throne" ; and his life is commemorated on a 
colossal statue of his father now in the museum at 
Berlin. He is "the ura?us snake on the front o! 
the royal crown ; the son whom Menephtah love?, 



t6o Mounds^ Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

who draws toward him his father's heart; the royal 
scribe; the singer; the chief of the archers; the 
prince Menephtah," and is represented as ador- 
ing Sutekh, "the great god, the lord of heaven." 
The inscription is followed by the death sign Ma- 
Khem, which means one " justified/ ' he who is 
"proclaimed righteous" at the judgment seat of 
Osiris. The tomb of the lad has been discovered 
at Thebes, unfinished, v/hich is a proof of some 
great calamity. 

The Psalmist says, describing these plagues: 
" He spared not their soul from death, but gave 
their life over to the pestilence" (Ps. lxxviii. 50). 
A plague like this often follows the khamsin, or 
sand storm. In 1580 fifty thousand men died 
of it in Cairo in eight months. In 1696 as many 
as ten thousand men died in one day. In Con- 
stantinople in 1714 it was reckoned that three 
hundred thousand died of it. Even in Palestine 
it made awful ravages, for it is said in 2 Samuel 
xxiv. 15 that seventy thousand died of it in three 
days. 

We are strikingly reminded how all these plagues 
are connected with the natural peculiarities and 
phenomena of Egypt, and in the minute accuracy 
of the Bible narrative we find a striking proof of its 
historical trustworthiness. The knowledge of the 
physical features of Egypt, its soil, climate, pro- 
ductions, natural history, and meteorology, which 
the author of this narrative exhibits, is such as 
could have been gained only by a long personal 



The Ten Plagues ef Egypt. 161 

residence in Egypt. The whole history of these 
plagues exhibits striking Egyptian pictures. 

The Egyptians, like the Assyrians, were not in 
the habit of leaving any record of disasters, and 
hence it is not strange that no reference to the terri- 
ble Red Sea calamity has ever been found on any of 
their monuments. But it is significant that among 
the great number of royal mummies recently dis- 
covered at Thebes, which included his father, his 
grandfather, and some of his successors, that of 
Menephtah was not found. The Scripture narra- 
tive does not state positively that Menephtah per- 
ished in the Red Sea with his troops. But a papy- 
rus of the next period confirms the disaster which 
he suffered at the hands of the Israelites, by show- 
ing the virtual breaking up of the kingdom of the 
Pharaohs from that date. The events of the later 
period of Menephtah's reign are passed over in 
perfect silence by the monuments. After him, the 
empire went ignominiously to pieces, and his suc- 
cessors could not prevent even single counties of 
the delta from breaking loose from their rule, de- 
claring themselves independent, and setting up dy- 
nasties of their own. The great Harris papyrus 
says of this period: "The population of Egypt 
had broken away over the borders, and among 
those who remained there was no commanding 
voice for many years. Hence Egypt fell under 
dynasties which ruled the towns. One killed the 
other in wild and fatal enterprises. Other disasters 
succeeded, in the shape of years of famine. Then 



162 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Aarsna, a Syrian, rose among them as prince, and 
the whole land did him homage." 

The passage of the Israelites over the Red Sea 
has long been a puzzle to Bible students, but since 
the discovery of Pithom, and the identification of 
the land of Goshen, we can trace the route of the 
exodus. They started from Pithom, and following 
along the line of the ancient canal, soon reached 
the frontier of Egypt. They were there stopped 
by the fortifications which ran along the isthmus 
from north to south. Turning toward the north, 
they came to the head of the Gulf of Suez, which 
is an inlet of the Red Sea, where the shallow wa- 
ters and the detached lakes furnish the situation 
for such a transit as is poetically called a passage 
"in the heart of the Red Sea." A strong wind 
blowing all night forced back the waters, and en- 
abled Israel to pass over dry shod. 

Palmer says, in his "Desert of the Exodus": 
61 A strong wind blowing from the east, at the mo- 
ment of the setting in of the ebb tide, might so drive 
back the waters that toward the sea they would be 
some feet higher than on the shore side. Such a 
phenomenon is frequently observed in lakes and 
inland seas ; and if there were, as there would very 
probably be, at the head of the gulf any inequality 
in the bed of the sea, or any chain of sand banks 
dividing the upper part of the gulf into two basins, 
that portion might be blown dry, and a path very 
soon left with water on either side. As the parting 
of the sea was caused by an east wind, the sudden 



The Ten Plagues of Egyjf>t. 163 

veering of this wind to the opposite quarter at the 
moment of the return tide would bring the waters 
back with unusual rapidity. This seems to have 
been actually the. case, for we find that the waters 
returned, not with a sudden rush, overwhelming 
the Egyptians at once, but gradually, and at first, 
as we might expect, saturating the sand, so that 'it 
took off their chariot wheels that they drave them 
heavily.' In the hurricane and darkness of the 
night this would naturally cause such a panic and 
confusion as seriously to retard them in their pas- 
sage; but, in the meantime, the waters were too 
surely advancing upon them, and when morning 
broke * Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea- 
shore.' The verse last quoted seems to show con- 
clusively that the wind did veer round to the west, 
for otherwise, with the east wind still blowing, the 
Egyptians would have been driven away from the 
Israelites, and thrown upon the opposite shore." 

Several instances have been given v/herethe ac- 
tion of wind upon shallow water has been the cause 
of such phenomenal results as are described in Ex- 
odus. Dean Stanley tells in " Sinai and Palestine" 
of the bed of the river Rhone being blown dry by 
a strong northwest wind. In 1738 the Russians 
entered the Crimea, which was strongly fortified 
against them by the Turks at the Isthmus of Pe- 
rekop, by a passage made for them by the wind 
through the shallow waters of the Putrid Sea, at the 
northwest corner of the Sea of Azov. Major Gen- 
eral Tulloch tells in the Journal of Victoria Institute 



164 Mounds^ Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

(vol. xxviii., p. 267) of an incident which he him- 
self saw when under a strong east wind the waters 
of Lake Menzaleh, at the entrance of the Suez 
Canal, receded for a distance of seven miles. M. 
Naville also gives an account of a number of simi- 
lar phenomena which he witnessed at various times. 
The route which has been indicated was evi- 
dently one of the main roads out of Egypt, and 
Goodwin has translated a papyrus in which there 
is a description of runaway slaves following this 
very road. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Revelations from the Land of the Nile. 

Rameses III. — The Great Harris Papyrus — Shishak, the Found- 
er of the Twenty-second Dynasty — Bubastis — Mummies of 
Cats— Pasht, the Cat Goddess— "The Hill of the Jews"— The 
City of Orion— The Habits and Customs of the Egyptians — 
Mention of Aaron. 

After the exodus, we fina no speciax reference to 
Egypt in the Scriptures until the raid of Shishak 
took place, 920 B.C. The death of Menephtah 
turned the power over into the hands of the mag- 
nates and great officials, and it was only after half 
a century that order was reestablished. Rameses 
III. began the twentieth dynasty, and his reign 
lasted over thirty years. His chief ambition seems 
to have been to imitate in all points his great ances- 
tor, Rameses II. The great Harris papyrus, one of 
the finest, best written, and best preserved that have 
been discovered in Egypt, is full of the praises of 
this sovereign, and is devoted to the commemora- 
tion of "the good and glorious works which he 
performed to the men of the land of Egypt, and of 
every land assembled together at one time; to in- 
form the fathers, the gods and goddesses of the 
south and north, mortals, intelligences, mankind, 
of the numerous glorious actions which he did on 
earth while great ruler of Egypt.' ' His mummy is 
in the museum at Gizeh. 

(>6 5 ) 



1 66 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Rameses III. was followed by a series of his sons 
and grandsons, all of whom were named Rameses, 
and under whose weak reign Egyptian power con- 
tinued to decline. The twenty-first dynasty con- 
sisted of a succession of military pontiff s or priest- 
kings, who had no influence upon the fortunes 
of the surrounding nations. Little more than 
their names are found on the monuments, though 
some of their mummies have been discovered. 
It is conjectured that one of these priest-kings, 
Pai-net'em II., was the Pharaoh who "made 
affinity" with Solomon (i Kings iii. i), and gave 
him his daughter in marriage. His mummy was 
found in 1881 in the famous cachetic at Deir 
el-Bahri. 

Shishak, a Libyan, was the founder of the twen- 
ty-second dynasty, and reunited the country under 
one rule. When Jeroboam fled from Solomon to 
escape death, he was received at the Egyptian 
court, and remained there until Solomon's death 
(1 Kings xi. 40). Afterwards, when Jeroboam had 
become king of the ten tribes of Israel, Shishak, as 
his ally, invaded Judah in the fifth year of Reho- 
boam's reign with one thousand two hundred char- 
iots, sixty thousand horsemen, and a large army of 
Libyans, Ethiopians, and Troglodytes, as well as 
Egyptians. He captured all the outlying posts, 
and Jerusalem only escaped total surrender by 
giving to the Egyptian king all the vast wealth of 
gifts stored in the temple, and all the treasures of 
the king's palace. A brief account of this invasion 



Revelations from the Land of the Nile. 167 

is given in I Kings xiv. 25, 26, and in the twelfth 
chapter of 2 Chronicles. 

An interesting memorial of this conquest is in a 
relief on the walls of a small temple built by Ram- 
eses III. on the south side of the great temple of 
Karnak, at Thebes. The smaller building was 
finished by Shishak himself, after his victory over 
Rehoboam. Its walls are covered inside and out 
with sculptures, among which is found this inter- 
esting reference to Jewish history. There is a co- 
lossal figure of Shishak dealing out blows to his 
conquered foes with an immense club, while be- 
hind him are paraded in long rows the names of 
one hundred and fifty-six subjugated towns and dis- 
tricts, each inclosed in a cartouch surmounted by 
the head of a captive. The god Amon comes to 
meet him with a long file of captives led by cords 
tied round their necks, the ends held in his hand. 
It was formerly thought that one of these figures 
bore the name of the Jewish king himself, but the 
inscriptions are now proved to be only a list of cap- 
tured towns. Among these are to be found not 
only the names of Jewish towns, but of Israelitish 
fortresses also — such as Megiddo, Taanach, and 
Abel — showing that this Egyptian campaign was 
directed against the northern kingdom as well as 
against Judah. One of the cities is called Judah- 
melck, or "Judah-king," a title by which it is pos- 
sible that Jerusalem may have been intended. Shi- 
shak is the first Pharaoh whose name is given in 
the Old Testament, and he made Bubastis, on the 



168 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

eastern side of the delta, his capital, as being con- 
venient for making war upon King Rehoboam, his 
enemy. A dedicatory tablet of Shishak, bearing 
his name, was found by M. Naville among the ruins 
of Pithom. 

Bubastis was one of the oldest cities in Lower 
Egypt, as is shown from the tradition told by Man- 
etho that in the second dynasty a chasm opened it- 
self near the city, and that many people lost their 
lives therein. The standard of Cheops and the 
standard and name of Chefren have been un- 
earthed at Bubastis, so that these constructors of 
the great pyramids must have worshiped in its vast 
temple. While Shishak made Bubastis his capi- 
tal, he left no inscription there, except a small frag- 
ment of limestone with part of his cartouch. 

The site of Bubastis was discovered by M. Na- 
ville, and is near Zagazig, a station on the railroad 
between Suez and Cairo. Bubastis is the Pi-beseth 
of Ezekiel (xxx. 17), and has yielded up a vast 
number of interesting and priceless monuments. 
One of the most celebrated temples of Egypt was 
erected here to Pasht, the cat goddess, the avenger 
of crimes. According to Herodotus, all the cats of 
Egypt were embalmed and buried here. Whether 
the statement of Herodotus is true or not, it is cer- 
tain that vast numbers of cats were buried there, 
for a large cemetery of cats covers several acres 
west of the mounds toward Zagazig. The Egyp- 
tians had a special reverence for cats, and while 
most of them were 'embalmed, the most sacred 



Revelations from the Land of the Nile. 169 

ones were cremated in furnaces which may still be 
seen near at hand. The bones were placed in 
large pits, the walls and floors of which were made 
of brick or hardened clay. Some conception may 
be formed of the vast multitude of cats which 
thronged the temple of Bubastis when it is stated 
that a single pit was found to contain no less than 
seven hundred and twenty cubic feet of bones. 
From the Egyptian name Pasht, which was the 
deity the cat represented, is derived the name 
"puss" so often applied to cats. 

Bubastis was the chief residence of the later 
Hyksos kings, and one of the most interesting dis- 
coveries was made in 1888, when, in the eastern 
part of the temple, there was found a fine sculp- 
ture-portrait of Apepi, the Pharaoh of Joseph. M. 
Naville thinks that this is corroborated by the fact 
that the adjoining portal-jambs bear the inscription 
of that Apepi. This is the most perfect and finest 
piece of portrait-sculpture of the Hyksos school, 
and is now in the British Museum. 

It is probable that "Joseph's chariot passed from 
Bubastis right through the land of Goshen to meet 
his father at the eastern post of that great highway 
to the desert and the land of Canaan, which has 
seen the march of so many armies since the time 
of the great Pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty down 
to the entrance of the forces of modern times, 
guided by the stars to Tel-el-Kebir." 

Some thirty miles from Bubastis is a great mound 
called Tel-el- Yahoodieh, " The Hill of the Jews," 



170 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

which not only marks the site of a remarkable Jew- 
ish city, but underneath these more modern ruins 
are the remains of an Eg} r ptian city, which was 
founded as early as the middle kingdom. Several 
scarabs have been found bearing the name of User- 
tesen I., the second king of the brilliant twelfth 
dynasty. Numerous flint instruments and flakes 
were also found, which have been identified as be- 
longing to that early period, as have also certain 
fragments of pottery. 

The most important discoveries in this mound, 
however, belong to the glorious nineteenth dynasty. 
There is a model of the temple of On, which seems 
to have been made for a table of offerings, upon 
which the name of Seti I. is inscribed. Rameses 
II. forms one of a sitting group, and Turn Har- 
machis addresses the king in these words: "I am 
thy venerable father, the lord of thy beauties. . . . 
I am protecting thy limbs every day : thy might and 
the power of thy sword are above all lands. Thy 
hand is never opposed in all countries, King Ram- 
eses, friend of Harmachis, the great god." There 
has also been found a standing statue of Rameses 
II. and Rameses III., a column of Menephtah, and 
a stone with the name of an unknown king. There 
is also a group of King Menephtah and the god 
Set, wrought out of red granite; but the upper 
part of the god has been chiseled away. 

Above these Egyptian remains are the ruins of 
the city of Orion, where Onias, the son of the 
high priest of the Jews, erected a temple modeled 



Revelations from the Land of the Nile, 171 

after Solomon's temple. Antiochus Eupater, king 
of Syria, had shown great enmity against this Jew- 
ish family, having slain some of them and taken 
the high priesthood away from them ; and to escape 
his enemy Onias fled into Egypt. Ptolemy Philo- 
meter and Cleopatra gave him a gracious recep- 
tion, and granted his request to give him a city in 
which to build a temple and establish the worship 
of his fathers. The Ptolemies even regarded this 
project so favorably that they endowed it with a 
grant of land, and under such powerful protection 
the Jewish colony flourished for three hundred 
and forty-three years. But under the order of 
Vespasian it was destroyed, its treasury plundered, 
the Jews were expelled, and all traces of the Jew- 
ish worship were obliterated. 

This was a remarkable fulfillment of the proph- 
ecy of Isaiah : " In that day there shall be five cities 
in the land of Egypt that shall speak the language 
of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one 
shall be called, The City of Destruction. In that 
day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst 
of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border 
thereof to the Lord." (Isa. xix. 18. ) In the mar- 
gin of the Revised Version " The City of Destruc- 
tion is rendered "The City of the Sun." This is 
also the reading in the Vulgate, and is corrobo- 
rated by many authorities. M. Naville is also of 
the opinion that the sacred name of this city under 
the twentieth dynasty was "The House of Ra," or 
"The House of the Sun," which is "north of 



172 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

On," it being thus mentioned in the great Harris 
papyrus. 

It is well to call attention to the many incidental 
statements made in Genesis and Exodus regarding 
the habits and customs of the Egyptians, which 
show that they are pictures faithfully drawn from 
life. All of the chapters which relate to Egypt show 
a marked familiarity with that country, and many in- 
teresting illustrations of statements or allusions con- 
tained in the narrative have been supplied by the 
monuments. That Joseph shaved himself and 
changed his raiment before coming into Pharaoh's 
presence (Gen. xli. 14) is in agreement with what 
we know to have been an Egyptian custom; for 
all respectable Egyptians shaved themselves, and 
on the monuments only foreigners and natives of 
inferior rank are represented as wearing beards. 
The frequent repetition of the number seven in 
Pharaoh's dream (Gen. xli. 18-36) was in ac- 
cordance with the sanctity of the number seven 
among the Egyptians, for it was to them a sacred 
and magical number. In prescriptions seven drugs 
were often prescribed ; and in charms seven ob- 
jects were taken. Among the numerous forms of 
Hat-hor, seven are often in particular specified; 
and in the "Book of the Dead" mention is made 
of the seven sacred kine with their bull, who pro- 
vide food and drink for thf* dead, and whose good 
services the deceased invokes Ra ( Osiris) to secure 
on his behalf. When Pharaoh "took off his ring 
from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and 



Revelations from the Land of the Nile. 173 

put a gold chain about his neck," he was giving 
him a token of authority which, while it was a cus- 
tom in other countries, was notably so in Egypt, 
where the " keeper of the seal" was the king's 
deputy. The golden collar was a peculiarly Egyp- 
tian form of decoration, and was called "receiving 
gold. ' ' Ahmes, the captain general of the marines, 
who freed Egypt from the Hyksos, "received 
gold" on seven different occasions for various 
acts of valor. Several pictures on the monuments 
represent the Pharaohs as adorning their officers 
with chains of gold, one illustration being that of 
Amenophis IV. and another of Seti I. These col- 
lars were often of massive and costly workman- 
ship. v ' 

Horses and chariots are first represented on the 
Egyptian monuments under the eighteenth dynasty. 
It is probable, therefore, that they were introduced 
into Egypt during the Hyksos period, so that when 
Joseph went forth to meet his father in his chariot 
(Gen. xlvi. 29) we know that it was when chariots 
were just beginning to be used in that country. A 
scene is pictured on a tomb at Tel-el-Amarna, in 
which Amenophis IV., his queen and daughters, 
and the ministers in attendance appear riding in 
chariots of state. 

Most of the arts and industries which the Israel- 
ites possessed were acquired from ancient Egypt. 
We know that it was from this source that they ac- 
quired the knowledge to prepare the various ma- 
terials for the tabernacle and for its construction. 



174 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

When it is said that some of the families of Judah 
were " craftsmen," or "carpenters" (i Chron. iv. 
14), the reference was undoubtedly to "guilds" 
such as they had in Egypt. So also the "weavers 
of fine linen " (verse 21 ) and the "potters " (verse 
23) were instances of the various trades learned in 

Egypt. 

An interesting coincidence is that in the lists of 
places in Palestine drawn up by the great con- 
queror, Thothmes III., about the beginning of the 
fifteenth century B.C., at Karnak, are found the 
names Jacob-el and Joscpk-el. It is probable that 
these names preserve memorials of some of the 
establishments of the patriarch in Palestine. Pro- 
fessor McCurdy says: " Since Joseph, whose ca- 
reer was distinctly Egyptian, is found thus honored 
in Canaan, it would seem that the connection of 
Israel with Canaan during this era was much closer 
than has been generally supposed." 

In the Harris papyrus there occurs the name 
"Areos," "Arisu," or "Aarsu." It is said that 
the nineteenth dynasty of the Pharaohs "came to 
an end in great disorder, anarchy, and troubles of 
all sorts." Peace and order were at last reestab- 
lished by the father of Rameses III., in whose 
reign the papyrus was written. It is said that this 
"Aarsu" was one of the leaders of the rebellion, 
and that he was a Syrian, or of the Semitic race, 
who became great and headed an emigration. It 
has been suggested by Mr. Forbes, in a recent 
Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration 



Revelations from the Land of the Nile. 175 

Fund, that this was Aaron; and it is at least prob- 
able. From an Egyptian point of view, it would 
have been natural to consider him as the leader of 
the Israelites when they left Egypt, as his entire 
life had been spent there, and his name was well 
known from his having shared all the troubles and 
oppressions of his people. He was the spokesman 
before Pharaoh, and we find that Moses had many 
struggles to go through before he was recognized, 
even by the Israelites, as their leader. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
The Castle of the Jew's Daughter. 

Zedekiah, Last King of Judah — Tell Defeuneh, the Tahpanhes 
of Jeremiah — The Flight of the Jews to Egypt — Discovery 
of "The Castle of the Jew's Daughter" — Nebuchadrezzar's 
Conquest in Egypt — The " Sacred Stone of Scone." 

The story of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah and 
Jerusalem, is one of the most romantic and tragic 
histories in the Old Testament. When twenty-one 
years old, he was made king of Judah by Nebu- 
chadrezzar; and he might have had a long and 
peaceful reign, and preserved for some generations 
longer the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, if he 
had retained his allegiance to Babylon, andhad been 
content to allow Jerusalem to remain the head of 
the Babylonian province of Judah. But he was a 
weak and irresolute man, and allowed his princes 
to lead him into revolt against Babylon, notwith- 
standing the protests of Jeremiah. A Chaldean 
army quickly came and besieged Jerusalem, and 
for long and weary months the siege continued, 
until the city was reduced to the last extremity. 
All provisions having failed, the most terrible ex- 
pedients were resorted to by the inhabitants of the 
doomed city. Mothers boiled and ate the flesh of 
their own infants, and persons of the highest wealth 
and station were to be seen searching the dung- 
heaps for morsels of food. At last the catastrophe 
arrived, and one night at midnight the besiegers 



The Castle of the Jew* s Daughter, 177 

succeeded in making a breach in the walls, and 
took possession of the city and its wretched inhab- 
itants. Zedekiah and his sons were brought be- 
fore the king, and, with a refinement of cruelty 
characteristic of those rude times, Nebuchadrezzar 
ordered the sons to be killed before him, and then * 
the king's own eyes to be thrust out. He was 
loaded with brazen fetters, and at a later period 
taken to Babylon, where he died. 

But the daughters of Zedekiah were left behind 
in Jerusalem, which was occupied by a Chaldean 
garrison under a Chaldean governor. It was a 
time of plot and strife and disorder; and finally 
Johanan, the son of Kareah, acting as the guard- 
ian and adviser of the forlorn princesses, started 
with them to Egypt, to find safety and protection. 
Jeremiah protested earnestly against this flight into 
Egypt, and prophesied that Nebuchadrezzar would 
follow them down there and bring destruction upon 
them. But his warning was in vain, and the flight 
may be described as a later exodus — an exodus 
from Syria to Egypt, instead of from Egypt to 
Syria ; for with them went " all the remnant of Ju- 
dah and all the captains of the forces," a mixed 
multitude consisting largely of old men, women, 
and children, and such of the citizens as the sword 
and chains of the conqueror had spared. 

It is an interesting coincidence that on their way 

to Egypt they stopped at the geruth, or inn, of 

Chimham, "which is by Bethlehem " ( Jer. xli. 17 ). 

It is probable that this inn, which was on that part 

12 



173 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

of the paternal estate which David inherited, was 
given to Chimham, who was a Gileadite, by David 
because of the kindness shown to David in his ex- 
ile by Barzillai, the father of Chimham. As the 
khans, or inns, of the East cling with remarkable 
tenacity to their original sites, it is altogether prob- 
able that the "inn of Chimham" and the inn of 
Bethlehem, in which there was no room for the 
two late-comers from Nazareth at the time of our 
Lord's birth, were, if not identical, at any rate re- 
lated structures, and that the same inn which shel- 
tered these royal refugees on their way to Egypt 
sheltered the Lord of glory at his incarnation. 

" When the body of refugees reached Egypt, 
Apries the king, the "Hophra" of Scripture (Jer. 
xliv. 30), with royal hospitality, placed his pal- 
ace at Daphnae, the scriptural Tahpanhes, at 
the disposal of the fugitive princesses, and gave 
to the Jewish colony which had accompanied them 
a large tract of land. 

Jeremiah accompanied the exiles, but he con- 
tinued to lift up the voice of warning and proph- 
ecy upon the very threshold of the palace of Pha- 
raoh, and declared that the Babylonian conqueror 
would come down and destroy them. 

"Then came the word of the Lord unto Jere- 
miah in Tahpanhes, saying: Take great stones in 
thine hand, and hide them in mortar in the brick- 
work [inthe margin of the Revised Version, "pave- 
ment or square"] which is at the entry of Pharaoh's 
house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Ju- 



The Casile of the Jew' 's Daughter, 179 

dah; and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of 
hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will send and 
take Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my 
servant, and will set his throne upon these stones 
that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pa- 
vilion over them. And he shall come, and shall 
smite the land of Egypt; such as are for death 
shall be given to death, and such as are for captiv- 
ity to captivity, and such as are for the sword to 
the sword." (Jer. xjiii. 8-1 1.) 

Up to a very recent date an overhasty criticism 
had denied that Nebuchadrezzar was ever in Eg} T pt, 
but a number of inscriptions have been found show- 
ing that he did invade Egypt and made a success- 
ful campaign. A fragmentary (cuneiform) in- 
scription of Nebuchadrezzar himself, now in the 
British Museum, states that he invaded Egypt in 
his thirty-seventh year, defeated the king, and 
slaughtered or carried away soldiers and horses. 
In the Louvre there is a statue from Elephantine, 
representing Nes-Hor, governor of southern Egypt 
under Pharaoh Hophra, in which he states in an 
inscription that an army of Asiatics and northern 
people invaded Egypt, intending to advance up the 
valley of the Nile into Ethiopia; but that this dis- 
aster to the district under his command had been 
averted by the favor of the gods. There have also 
been found, in the neighborhood of Tahpanhes, 
three clay cylinders, bearing short inscriptions of 
Nebuchadrezzar, as though they had been dropped 
there at the time of his invasion. 



i8o Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

Within the last few years a mound, or group of 
mounds, called Tell Defeuneh, has been identified 
as.Tahpanhes, and Professor Petrie, of the Egypt 
Exploration Fund, has made some remarkable dis- 
coveries here. This place is situated close to Lake 
Menzaleh, at the extreme northeastern corner of the 
delta, and it is a long, tedious journey to it. There, 
in the midst of an arid waste, half marsh, half des- 
ert, the explorer found three groups of mounds, 
lying from half a mile to a mile apart, the inter- 
vening space strewn with debris and the remains of 
brick foundations, indicating the site of a large and 
important city. Two of the mounds were ordinary- 
looking, but the third was composed of the burned 
and blackened ruins of a large pile of brick build- 
ings, visible for a great distance across the plain. 
As Mr. Petrie approached this great mass of brick 
and saw it standing high against the sky, we may 
imagine his surprise and delight as his Arab guides 
pointed it out and told him that its local name far 
and near was Kasr Bint cl-Yehudi, " The Castle 
of the Jew's Daughter." 

As he set to work with his laborers, he soon dis- 
covered that the ruins were those of a great castle 
and palace combined. It consisted of one enor- 
mous square tower rising to the height of a num- 
ber of stories, with sixteen rooms on each floor, 
while all around it were later structures, built up 
against its outer walls. Very many valuable relics 
and deposits were brought to light, and the kitch- 
en, butler's pantry, and other rooms on the ground 



The Castle of th Jew's Daughter. 1S1 

floor were found intact. But the most interesting 
discovery was that of a pavement of brickwork in 
front of the fortress, measuring about one hundred 
by sixty feet. This "brickwork, or pavement," 
mentioned in his prophecy by Jeremiah, "at the en- 
try of Pharaoh's house," has always been a puzzle 
to translators and commentators, as no such place 
had ever been found in connection with an Egyp- 
tian palace. But here it was, just where Jeremiah 
said it should be, coming to light after more than 
twenty-five hundred years, confirming in a remark- 
able manner the statement of the prophet. 

Mr. Petrie says, in his report of this discovery, 
made in April, 1886: "As soon as we began to 
uncover the plan of the palace, the exactness of the 
description was manifest; for here, outside the 
buildings adjoining the central tower, I found, by 
repeated trenchings, an area of continuous brick- 
work resting on sand, and measuring about one 
hundred feet by sixty feet, facing the entrance to 
the buildings at the east corner. The roadway 
ran up a recess between the buildings, and this 
platform, which has no traces of superstructure, 
was evidently an open-air place for loading and un- 
loading goods, or sitting out in the air, or transact- 
ing business, or conversing — just such a place, in 
fact, as is made by the Egyptians to this day in 
front of their houses, where they drink coffee, and 
smoke in the cool of the afternoon, and receive 
their visitors. Such seems to have been the object 
of this large platform, which was evidently a place 



182 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

to meet persons who would not be admitted into 
the palace or fort; to assemble guards, to hold 
large levees, to receive tribute and stores, to unload 
goods, and to transact the multifarious business 
which, in so hot a climate, is done in the open air. 
This platform is therefore, unmistakably, the brick- 
work, or pavement, which is at the ' entry of Pha- 
raoh's house in Tahpanhes.' " 

During all these centuries the tradition that this 
palace was a refuge for the daughters of the Jew- 
ish king has been preserved, and the very Arabs 
who live in all the neighborhood, though ignorant 
of the story, vouch for its truth by retaining the 
name. And the very brickwork is there to-day of 
which Jeremiah spoke, and on which Nebuchad- 
rezzar spread his pavilion and planted his royal 
standard in the hour of victory. * 

The Bible is silent regarding the subsequent his- 
tory of Jeremiah and the king's daughters, who 
were the last of the ancient and noble royal line of 
Judah. But there is a strange tradition that Jere- 
miah escaped with Baruch and at least one of the 
king's daughters, when Nebuchadrezzar came 
down into Egypt; that they fled first to the land of 
Judah, and from thence by sea to Ireland. There, 
the tradition goes on to say, Zedekiah's daughter 
married the young king of Ireland, and from this 
union descended the long and unbroken line of 
Irish and Scottish kings, stretching through twenty- 
five centuries to James VI. of Scotland, who be- 
came James I. of England. But the most singular 



The Castle of the Jew 's Daughter. 183 

part of this tradition is that when Jeremiah went to 
Egypt he carried with him the "Pillar of Witness," 
which was the stone that Jacob set up at Bethel, 
and to which he referred when dying as " the stone 
of Israel." This stone was said to have been used 
at the coronation of the Jewish kings (2 Kings xi. 
14), and was one of the stones which Jeremiah 
buried in the pavement at the entry of Pharaoh's 
house at Tahpanhes. When he escaped to Ireland, 
he took this stone with him, and on it the Irish and 
Scottish kings were crowned, until Edward II. in 
1296 appointed an English commission to govern 
Scotland, and carried off to England the crown 
jewels and this stone, which was called the "sacred 
stone of Scone." This stone was made into the 
seat of the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, 
and from that day to this all the kings and queens 
of England have been crowned on it. The Scots 
declared that wherever it went there sooner or later 
Scottish kings would reign, and their prophecy 
came true when James I. was crowned. 

That stone, whatever may be its real history, is 
still under the seat of the coronation chair of West- 
minster Abbey, and every visitor to that venerable 
structure sees it. Dean Stanley says: "The chief 
object of attraction to this day, to the innumerable 
visitors of Westminster Abbey, is probably that 
ancient Irish muniment of the empire known as the 
coronation stone." Formerly, an inscription in 
Latin was attached to the stone stating that it was 
the pillar on which Jacob rested his head at Bethel, 



184 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

and that it was carried from Palestine to Egypt, 
and thence to Ireland. This has since been re- 
moved, but the present dean of Westminster has 
placed another inscription on it setting forth the 
strange legend of its history. 

It is said that Irish historians, twenty of them in 
all, agree that about 585 B.C. a divine man landed 
in Ulster, having with him the king's daughter, the 
stone, of destiny, the ark, and many wonderful 
things ; that from Circa, who was the king's daugh- 
ter, comes our goddess of liberty on old coins, sit- 
ting on a lion and holding a harp. The lion, as is 
well known, was the symbol or ensign of Judah. 
The "harp of Tara" was but the harp of David, 
transplanted to a distant land. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Valuable Ancient Manuscripts and Egyptian 
Papyri. 

The Syriac Gospels Found in the Convent of St. Catherine 
on Mount Sinai — "Acts of St. Paul" — "Apology for Chris- 
tianity," by Aristides — The "Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles" — Epistles of Clement of Rome — First Chapter of Mat- 
thew — "Sayings of Our Lord" — Book of Enoch — Gospel of 
St. Peter. 

Among the most interesting and important dis- 
coveries that have been made during the last two 
decades of the past century are ancient Christian 
manuscripts dating back almost to the beginning of 
the Christian era. These largely relate to the text 
of the Gospels and confirm the New Testament 
history. 

The most valuable modern discovery that has 
been made, next to that of the Codex Sinaiticus 
by Professor Tischendorf, is that of the Syriac 
Gospels found in the Convent of St. Catherine on 
Mount Sinai in 1892 by Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis 
and Mrs. James Y. Gibson, two English women 
famous for their w r ork in Bible study. It was in 
the same cloister that Tischendorf found his great 
manuscript. This convent was in the sixth cen- 
tury turned into a fortress by Justinian, and as the 
smaller neighboring convents fell into decay their 
documents were probably transferred to the forti- 
fied convent for safe keeping. This doubtless ac- 

(.85) 



iS6 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

counts for the fact that a great wealth of treasures 
is stored away in its old library, many of them in 
chests and closets, which for centuries have been 
untouched. By good fortune these two women 
gained the confidence of the monks, and with the 
assistance of Dr. J. Rendel Harris, of Cambridge 
University, England, were permitted to make pho- 
tographs of all the pages of the manuscript, and 
these have since been translated and published. 

The manuscript was a palimpsest — that is, a 
manuscript which had been twice written upon, the 
first writing having been glazed over with some 
preparation. The upper or later writing consisted 
of stories regarding early Christian women. This 
preparation had begun to come off, and under it 
the original writing came to light and was discov- 
ered to be an old manuscript of the Gospels in the 
Palestine Aramaic language, the vernacular doubt- 
less of Christ and the apostles, and believed to have 
been written in the second centuiy. With very 
few exceptions, this Syriac Gospel is identical with 
the authorized version of the Scriptures. 

A few years ago an important discovery was 
made by the great Coptic scholar, Carl Scmidt, of 
Heidelberg, who found an Egyptian papyrus con- 
taining a large fragment of the famous "Acts of St. 
Paul." This is known from the Church historian, 
Eusebius, to have been one of the five extra-canon- 
ical books that ranked next to the New Testament 
books officially received into the canon. This book, 
modeled after the Acts of St. Luke, purports to give 



Ancient Manuscripts and Papyri. 1S7 

a record of Paul's missionary activity in the vari- 
ous cities of Asia Minor and Greece. It also gives 
the spurious correspondence between Paul and the 
Corinthians, previously known from Armenian 
sources ; and this discovery also revealed the fact 
that the Acts of Thecla, a copy of which had been 
discovered some decades previously, and which 
was a history of Paul's most famous female convert, 
was a portion of these ''Acts of St. Paul." As Eu- 
sebius, who died in 340 A.D., gives special men- 
tion of this book, it was written either in the sec- 
ond or third century. While according to Harnack, 
the distinguished German scholar of Berlin, it has 
little historical value, it is of very great interest as 
being closely related to the New Testament docu- 
ments. A leaf of this manuscript was also found 
by Grenfell and Hunt in their great discovery at 
Oxyrhynchus. 

\ Another discovery of the highest value is the Apol- 
ogy for Christianity made by Aristides, an Athenian 
philosopher who lived in the time of the Emperor 
Hadrian, and wrote his book about A. D, 123. He 
is the oldest of the apologists, antedating Justin 
Martyr. Jerome says that his Apology was filled 
with passages from the writings of the philosophers, 
and that Justin afterwards made much use of it. 

The "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" was 
found in 1875 by Byrennios, a bishop of the Greek 
Church, in a library at Constantinople. While the 
manuscript discovered is dated A. D. 1056, the orig- 
inal was written about A.D. 150, and is one of the 



1S8 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

five books mentioned by Eusebius as associated 
with the New Testament canon. The book is of 
very great interest in giving the doctrines of the 
early Church, and also in the many quotations 
which are found in it from the New Testament. 
Through this valuable little book we have also re- 
ceived a very great addition to our knowledge of 
primitive Christianity, and learn of the simplicity 
and purity of the early Christians. It supplies a 
long-missing link in the chain of evidence between 
the close of the apostolic age and Justin Martyr, re- 
specting the rites, polity , and life of the Church. It 
also furnishes valuable aid in understanding some 
obscure points in the writings of Clement, Poly- 
carp, Barnabas, and Ignatius. It is believed to 
have originated in either Syria or Egypt, and to 
have been prepared as a sort of Church manual as 
well as a catechism for Jewish catechumens. It 
has an almost absolute lack of ritualistic forms, and 
the command to meet together is coupled with a 
description of the spirit which should be cherished 
by the participants, being largely a repetition of the 
injunction of Christ recorded in Matt. v. 23, 24. 

We now also possess in complete form two epis- 
tles of Clement of Rome, addressed from the 
Roman to the Corinthian Church, and which be- 
long to the first century. Clement was one of the 
early presbyters of the Church in Rome, and Ire- 
naeus, who wrote between 182 and 188 A. D., makes 
him the third in order after the apostles Peter and 
Paul. Eusebius, whose history was written about 



Ancient Manuscripts and Pafyri. 189 

325 A.D., speaks of the epistle to the Church at 
Corinth by Clement as having been " publicly read 
in very many churches, both in former times and 
in our own." Until recently the only known Clem- 
entine manuscript was the one appended to the Alex- 
andrian Codex of the Scriptures sent by CyrilLucar 
to Charles I. in 1628, and now in the British Mu- 
seum, some portions of which are missing. But 
these recently discovered manuscripts are not only 
complete, but are declared by competent authorities 
to have been written 95-98 A.D. 

A very interesting and important discovery was 
made in the winter of 1896-7 by Messrs. Grenfell 
and Hunt, two young Oxford scholars, on the site 
of the ancient city ot Oxyrynchus, on the edge of 
the Libyan desert, one hundred and twenty miles 
south of Cairo. This city was situated on the 
banks of the Bahr Yusef, the " Canal of Joseph," 
which rushes through the Fayoum like a perfect 
torrent. Tradition says that this mighty river was 
turned into its artificial bed by the great prime min- 
ister of the Pharaohs, whose name and fame are 
recorded in the Scriptures, and hence it is called 
by his name. 

Under the ruins of this city these explorers 
found a great mass of ancient papyri, ranging 
from the Roman conquest to early Arab times. 
They brought home with them two hundred and 
eighty boxes full, besides depositing with the 
Egyptian government one hundred and fifty com- 
plete rolls. It will take a number of years to de- 



igo Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

cipher them all, but the fragments of two ancient 
books have already been published, which are of 
almost incalculable value. 

The first papyrus contains nearly the whole of 
the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, 
which is believed by the highest authorities to have 
been written 150 A.D. This is the oldest and 
most important record of the New Testament ever 
brought to light, and in this new discovery we pos- 
sess a leaf from the New Testament of some Egyp- 
tian Christian who lived between seventeen and 
eighteen hundred years ago. We have here abso- 
lute proof that the Christians who lived during the 
apostolic age had in their possession the same Gos- 
pel that we use to-day. 

The other document is a leaf from what is called 
the "Logia, or Sayings of our Lord," written by 
an Egyptian Christian named Papias, who was 
probably a disciple of John, and who early in the 
second century wrote an "Explanation of the 
Lord's Discourses," in five little books. These 
booklets are known to have been in existence up to 
the fifteenth century, though now but a few frag- 
ments are found in quotations made by later au- 
thors, and the books themselves have long since 
disappeared. 

Papias says that he had taken great pains to col- 
lect all the information that he could from the 
apostles, and in his " Logia" he undertook to re- 
cord all the sayings of Christ not found in the Gos- 
pels. We know that many utterances of our Lord 



Ancient Manuscripts and Papyri. 191 

were not recorded by the evangelists. Paul quotes 
a saying not in the notes of the evangelists, name- 
ly: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." 
John says in the last verse of his Gospel: "And 
there are also many other things which Jesus did, 
the which if they should be written every one, I 
suppose that even the world itself would not contain 
the books that should be written." 

The opinion of the best scholars is that this frag- 
ment from the sayings of our Lord was written 
certainly before the year 200. This leaf of papy- 
rus is about six inches by four in measurement, 
and there are eight sentences or "words of Jesus" 
written on it. They are as follows: 

1. " [Jesus saith, Cast out first the beam out of 
thine own eye], and then shalt thou see to cast 
out the mote in thy brother's eye." (Matt. vii. 
5; Luke vi. 42.) 

2. "Jesus saith, Except ye fast to the world, ye 
shall not find the kingdom of God; and unless ye 
keep the true sabbath, ye shall not see the Father." 

3. 4. "Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the 
world, and in my flesh I was seen of them, and I 
found all men drunken, and not one found I thirsty 
among them ; and my soul is weary for the souls 
of men, for they are blind in their heart and see 
[not, poor and know not] their poverty." 

5. "Jesus saith, Wherever there be [two, they 
are not without] God, and if anywhere there be 
one, I am with him: raise the stone, and there thou 
shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I." 



192 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

6. * 'Jesus saith, A prophet is not received in his 
own country, nor doth a physician heal his neigh- 
bors." ( See Luke iv. 24; Matt. xiii. 57; Markvi. 
4; John iv. 44.) 

7. "Jesus saith, A city built on the summit of a 
lofty mountain and firmly established cannot fall 
nor be hidden." (Matt. v. 14.) 

8. "Jesus saith, Thou hearest with [one ear], 
but the other [hast thou closed]." 

Professor A. H. Sayce, commenting on this dis- 
covery, says : ■ "For New Testament times the dis- 
coveries already made are an earnest of what we 
may yet hope to recover from the papyri of the 
Roman period in Egypt. The mounds of the 
Egyptian cities are filled with them, and the Logia 
are a foretaste of what is yet to come. Who knows 
whether the autograph of St. Mark has not been 
preserved for us in the safe-keeping of the Egyp- 
tian soil? At all events, Egypt was the land in 
which the Septuagint translation of the Old Testa- 
ment was made, and sooner or later fragments of 
it which go back of the Christian era must assur- 
edly be found. Though the papyri of Alexandria 
may have perished through the infiltration of the 
water of the Mediterranean, there are other places 
in Egypt where Greek colonists settled, and where 
Greek papyri of the age of the Septuagint trans- 
lators have been disinterred. We have found the 
last poems of Bacchylides, the rival of Pindar; of 
Herondas, the painter of Greek life in the Alexan- 
drine epoch; of the Attic tragedian, Euripides; a 



Ancient Manuscripts and Papyri. 193 

lost treatise of Aristotle has been restored to us, 
and the Gnostic writings controverted by St. Irenae- 
us have been recovered; there is every reason to 
believe that copies will also be found of the books 
of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, which will 
place before us the Greek text of the Old Testa- 
ment as it was used by the contemporaries of our 
Lord, or even, it may be, a lost epistle of St. Paul." 

A curious corroboration of a statement in Jere- 
miah is among the many discoveries that have been 
made in Egypt. Jeremiah says : " Take these evi- 
dences, this evidence of the purchase, both which 
is sealed, and this evidence which is open ; and put 
them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue 
many days" (xxxii. 14). Recently Mr. Petrie 
found in an earthen pot -near Memphis two com- 
plete and magnificently written Greek documents, 
the deeds of a transfer of property between two 
Coptic monks. Thirty or forty years ago there 
was found a great collection of documents in a 
very large vessel in Egypt, all of them reaching 
from the second and first century before Christ, 
and which have since been scattered through many' 
museums. 

In the winter of 1886 three valuable documents 
were found in a Christian tomb at Ekhmin, in Up- 
per Egypt. They were a considerable portion of 
a narrative of the crucifixion, a portion of the Greek 
text of the Book of Enoch, and a part of what is 
called the Gospel of St. Peter. These papers were 
found among a batch of Egyptian papyri, and were 
13 



194 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

purchased at Cairo for the library of the Univer- 
sity of Strasburg. The curious apocalyptic Book 
of Enoch is known to belong to an age preceding 
the Christian era, having been written in the sec- 
ond and first centuries B.C. That it was known 
to the writers of the New Testament is shown by 
the quotation which Jude gives (verse 14), and 
by other phrases which are reproduced in the 
New Testament, without acknowledgment of their 
source. 

This Gospel of St. Peter is believed by German 
scholars to be a new Gospel — a new inspired record 
of Christ's life and teachings.- It is different alto- 
gether from the old manuscript of the Apocalypse 
of Peter, and it is claimed to be the lost Gospel of 
the Egyptians. Only two pages of this Gospel 
have been found, each having words on both sides, 
but being badly torn. The writing is in Coptic, 
the language spoken by the Egyptians at the time 
of the Saviour's birth and during the early centu- 
ries of the Church. There has been a good deal 
of controversy regarding it, and some scholars have 
been very skeptical as to its genuineness. But 
there is no doubt that the manuscript is of very 
early date, and that it displays Docetic tendencies. 
The first fragment contains a prayer by Christ and 
an address by him to the apostles. There is also 
an account of the agony at Gethsemane closely re- 
sembling those in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The 
second fragment, which is much more incomplete 
than the other, gives a brief account of the cruci- 



Ancient Manuscripts and Pafyri. 195 

fixion and the resurrection, and the Doceticism of 
the writer is shown by giving this as the cry of 
Christ on the cross : " My power, my power, thou 
hast left me!" This apochryphal Gospel also 
transfers the responsibility for the death of our 
Lord from Pilate to the Jews. 

The largest Greek papyrus which has ever been 
found is one which relates to the farming of taxes 
in Egypt. It was written in the twenty-seventh 
year of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, and' there- 
fore dates from 258 B.C. The document is about 
twenty-four feet long, and was rolled up very tight- 
ly in a large jar. It was found by some Arabs in 
the Fayoum, and sold by them to Mr. Petrie. This 
custom of farming taxes was universal among the 
Hellenistic monarchies, and passed from them to 
the Romans. There are many allusions to this in 
the New Testament, and the publicans were the 
buyers and collectors of taxes. This was why they 
were so hated and ostracised by the Jews. This 
manuscript gives the most minute details regarding 
the management of this tax system, and describes 
it as does no other document in our possession. 
Professor Mahaffy, who has given this papyrus a 
careful examination, says : ii In the first part of the 
papyrus there appear to be regulations affecting 
the government officials and their relations to the 
tax farmers, and among these one seems plain — no 
government official is, under any circumstances, to 
bid for or undertake the collecting of a tax. That 
must be done by private individuals. The state 



196 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

issues a notice that such tax will be sold by auction 
on such a day. Perhaps, indeed, the price was 
fixed, but the state made choice between various 
applicants. But when these people bid for the 
contract they were by no means allowed to exact 
what they could above the rent they paid to the 
state.' ' Some such rule as this last probably ob- 
tained in Palestine, and that was why Zaccheus, 
when his conscience was aroused, being one of the 
principal farmers or chief among the publicans, 
declared that he was ready to give half his goods 
to the poor, and to restore fourfold of whatever he 
had unjustly acquired. (Luke xix. 8.) It is said 
that at that time the Roman law required that 
whenever any publican was convicted of extortion 
he should be obliged to render four times the value 
of what he had extorted. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
The Land of Promise and of Prophecy. 

Unique and Singular — Its Size — Four Longitudinal Belts — Its 
Geographical Position — An Epitome of the World — Differ- 
ence Between Palestine and Egypt — Now Desolate and For- 
saken. 

The land of Palestine is unique and singular among 
all the countries of the world. In its plrysical fea- 
tures, in its climate, in its fauna and flora, in its 
geographical position, and in its history, it stands 
alone. For nineteen hundred years the Christian 
world has looked with reverence and devotion 
toward this stricken and helpless land, which Re- 
nan has well called "The Fifth Gospel." A cloud 
of historic presences hovers over it, and a multi- 
tude of the most precious memories of the race 
start into being when the name of Palestine is heard. 
The air is filled as with the very presence of arch- 
angels, and the very dust beneath your feet is 
sacred. There lived Abraham and Isaac and Ja- 
cob ; there David sang, and Isaiah prophesied, and 
Jeremiah wept; there angels came down and talked 
with men, and God revealed himself to patriarch, 
prophet, and apostle; there the long drama of Israel's 
history was enacted, and there the early history of 
the Church began; across those historic plains for 
three thousand years war led all the nations of the 
earth in terrible procession, and its very soil has 

(197) 



198 Mounds^ Monuments^ and Inscriptions. 

been enriched by the blood of human victims. 
But, more than all else, in that land lived the only- 
divine life which this world ever saw, and there He 
appeared whose right hand has lifted heathenism 
off its hinges and turned into new channels the 
course of the dolorous and accursed ages. There 
are 

Those holy fields, 
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, 
Which nineteen hundred years ago were nailed, 
For our advantage, on the bitter cross. 

In size the Holy Land is by no means propor- 
tioned to its moral and historical position, as the 
theater of the most momentous events in the world's 
history. It is but a strip of country less than one 
hundred and forty miles in length from Dan to 
Beersheba, and barely forty miles in average 
breadth, on the very frontier of the East, hemmed 
in between the Mediterranean Sea on the one hand 
and the Arabian Desert on the other. And yet to 
the traveler and student who examines its geogra- 
phy, topography, climate, fauna and flora, no more 
astonishing corroboration of bliblical statements is 
to be found in all the world. God put Israel in 
Palestine for the threefold purpose of being pre- 
served through all the changes of ancient history, of 
being educated in true religion and sent forth to 
the world as apostles and examples. This is the 
only land on this earth where these results could 
have been accomplished; and that land as it stands 
to-day is an unanswerable argument for the truth of 



The Land of Promise and of Prophecy. 199 

Old Testament history. George Adam Smith well 
says : " There is no land which is at once so much a 
sanctuary and an observatory as Palestine ; no land 
which, till its office was fulfilled, was so swept by the 
great forces of history, and yet was so capable of pre- 
serving one tribe in national continuity and growth : 
one tribe learning and suffering and rising superior 
to the successive problems these forces presented to 
her, till upon the opportunity afforded by the last 
of them she launched with her results upon the 
world. If a man can believe that there is no direct- 
ing hand behind our universe and the history of 
our race, he will, of course, say that all this is the 
result of chance. But, for most of us, only another 
conclusion is possible. It may best be expressed 
in the words of one who was no theologian, but a 
geographer — perhaps the most scientific observer 
Palestine has ever had. Karl Ritter says of Pal- 
estine : * Nature and the course of history show 
that here, from the beginning onward, there can- 
not be talk of any chance.' " 

The entire country divides itself into four longi- 
tudinal belts between the sea and the desert, each 
reaching from north to south, and each distinct in 
their physical structure. The first is the strip of 
maritime plain extending along the Mediterranean 
from the mouth of the Litany to Gaza. Narrow on 
the north, it broadens toward the south into the beau- 
tiful plain of Sharon. Then a mountainous range 
runs through the center of the country, pierced 
by innumerable ravines, through which flow the 



200 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions, 

mountain torrents into the valley of the Jordan on 
the one side and the Mediterranean on the other. 
Beyond this range is the Jordan valley, the most 
remarkable feature of Palestine, which runs through 
the land, from north to south, straight as an arrow. 
There is nothing like it in the world. It is a tremen- 
dous rent or fissure in the earth's crust, a great geo- 
logical fault, one hundred and fifty miles in length, 
being everywhere below the level of the ocean, and 
at the Dead Sea reaching the enormous depth of 
four thousand feet from the lips of the fissure to 
the bed of the sea, no less than two thousand six 
hundred and twenty-four feet of which is beneath 
the level of the ocean. Such a cleft in the earth's 
crust is without a parallel. The valley is of nearly 
uniform breadth, about ten miles from brow to 
brow, though expanding slightly at Tiberias and 
the Dead Sea. The remaining part of Palestine, 
east of the Jordan, forms a beautiful and fertile 
tract of high table-land, where Reuben, Gad, and 
Manasseh had their portion in the original division 
of the land. 

The geographical position of Palestine is as pe- 
culiar as its physical features. It is central, and 
yet almost completely isolated. It commands equal 
facilities of access to Europe, Asia, and Africa; 
while, in one point of view, it stands apart from all. 
It is on the extremest western edge of the East, 
pushed forward, as it were, by the huge continent 
of Asia, which seems almost to have rejected it 
and cut it off from communication by the broad 



The Land cf Promise and of Prophecy, 201 

and barren desert between it and the vast regions 
of Mesopotamia and Arabia. It stands on the 
shores of the Mediterranean, as if it had advanced 
as far as possible toward the west — that new 
world which in the fullness of time it was so might- 
ily to affect. Whenever you pass it going toward 
the east, you feel that you have reached the Ori- 
ent; so soon as you have passed it coming west, 
you realize that you are in the Occident, and it is 
the dividing ridge between the eastern and the 
western worlds. Well might Ezekiel say, "Thus 
saith the Lord God, This is Jerusalem: I have set 
it in the midst of the nations and countries that are 
round about her." 

Another very striking fact regarding Palestine is 
that it is in very many respects an epitome of the 
world. In its physical character it presents on a 
small scale the natural features of all regions, moun- 
tainous and desert, northern and tropical, maritime 
and inland, pastoral, arable, and volcanic. It is a 
land of hills and valleys, of mountains and plains, 
of lakes and meadows. So also in its climatic 
features it represents all countries. It is the only 
country in the world where in a distance of one 
hundred and fifty miles you can find every variety 
of climate. This variety is due to the difference 
of level between the different parts of the country » 
In the low valley of the Jordan, the climate is sub- 
tropical. Buried as it is between such lofty ranges, 
and shielded from every breeze, the atmosphere is 
extremely hot and relaxing. But when you are in 



202 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

the neighborhood of the mountain range which 
forms the backbone of the country, fresh sea- 
breezes temper the summer heats, and the cool 
nights give you the climate of the temperate zone. 
In the neighborhood of snow-capped Hermon and 
Lebanon on the north, you find a climate similar 
to that of regions much farther north, and you can 
scarcely realize that you are in the same land 
where you felt only a little while before the torrid 
heat of the shores of the Dead Sea. 

This regular gradation from the cold of northern 
Europe to the heat of the tropics produces a corre- 
sponding variety of vegetation. Most of the plants 
of Europe, Asia, and Africa are found in the re- 
spective departments of Palestine. There are 
palms in Jericho and pine forests in Lebanon. On 
the mountain tops of Hermon, Bashan, and Gali- 
lee, the products of the cold regions of the north 
grow luxuriantly; on the coast plains are found 
the cereals and flowers of the temperate zone, while 
in the deep valley of the Jordan an African flora 
abounds. Wheat, barley, and oats of the north; 
sugar, figs, grapes, olives, and oranges of the south ; 
and pomegranates, palms, and bananas of the trop- 
ics, all grow and flourish in this wonderful country. 
It is marvelous how closely these differences lie to 
each other. From the summit of Carmel you can 
see the palms of the Jordan valley, the wheat fields 
of Esdraelon, the oaks and s} r camores of Galilee, 
the pines and snows of Anti-Lebanon. 

The same statement is true with regard to the 



The Land of Promise and of 'Prophecy. 203 

fauna. The bear of the snowy heights of Leba- 
non and the gazelle of the desert may be hunted 
within two days' journey of each other; the wolf 
of the north and the leopard of the tropics howl 
within hearing of the same bivouac ; while the fal- 
cons, the linnets, and buntings recall the familiar 
inhabitants of English fields, and the sparkling little 
sunbird and the grackle of the glen introduce us to 
the most brilliant types of the bird life of Asia and 
South Africa. 

We see in all these striking features of Palestine 
a testimony to the landscape pictures and geograph- 
ical relations of Israel which we find in the Old 
Testament. The poetry and narrative of the Bible 
reflect the natural features of the promised land 
both in writing and detail. Napoleon is quoted as 
saying: " When camping on the ruins of those an- 
cient towns, they read aloud Scripture every even- 
ing in the tent of the general in chief. The anal- 
ogy and the truth of the descriptions were striking: 
they still fit this country after so many centuries 
and changes.' ' 

In the eleventh chapter of the book of Deuteron- 
omy the striking differences are brought out be- 
tween Palestine and Egypt: " For the land, whither 
thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of 
Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sow- 
edst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a 
garden of herbs: but the land, whither ye go to 
possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drink- 
eth water of the rain of heaven; a land which the 



204 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord 
thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of 
the year even unto the end of the year." 

It was for a wise purpose that God put his 
chosen people into such a land as this, and there 
are no facts in nature or in history that more won- 
derfully display God's providence than the striking 
and peculiar features of this land. In the first 
place, it was necessary that, as the sole preservers 
of a true faith and the sole guardians of a divine 
revelation, they should be separated geographically 
from the evil example and baneful influence of 
heathen nations; and hence Canaan was made the 
most isolated country in the world. But it was also 
important for them to receive all that was good in 
the civilizations of the most cultured nations of the 
ancient world ; and hence their little land was a 
highway for the armies of Egypt, Assyria, and 
Greece. But the time was to come when Judaism 
was to be developed into Christianity; when that 
divine religipn was to go out from Palestine into 
the whole world and become the religion of man- 
kind. Hence God made the land where this faith 
was nurtured a representation in miniature of the 
whole world; and when it was carried out to all 
men it was not provincial, but universal, and those 
who carried it were cosmopolitan, because they had 
lived in a land which was a little world in itself. 
Palestine was the cradle of Christianity, and it was 
the only country in the whole world which was fitted 
to be its cradle. For only under the conditions 



The Land of Promise and of Prophecy. 205 

which existed there could it reach its maturity in 
its cradle, and then be thrust forth and find the 
world its home and sphere of action. When that 
transition period came, Palestine was seen to be 
especially designed to consummate the divine plan 
by the ready access it afforded for the messengers 
of truth to go to every kingdom of the known 
world. Before the establishment of Christianity, 
the sea had become the highway of nations. The 
Mediterranean, hitherto a barrier, was now the easi- 
est channel of communication ; and from the shores 
of Palestine the gospel was wafted away to the pop- 
ulous shores and crowded cities of the great na- 
tions of the West. Thus^ God carried out his pur- 
poses, and the land stands there to-day, a Fifth 
Gospel, revealing the divine will and providence, 
and an unanswerable argument, for the truth of 
revelation. 

To-day Palestine lies desolate and forsaken — so 
utterly desolate that, as some one has said, "the 
twittering birds cannot fiy over it without haver- 
sacks." You are confronted in every direction 
with desolation, fulfilling prophecy to the letter. 
No better description of that land as it is to-day 
can be given than this prophecy made by Moses 
while the children of Israel were yet in the wilder- 
ness, and which he declared would be the result 
of their disobedience: "I will make your cities 
waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, 
and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors'. 
And I will bring the land into desolation : and your 



206 Mounds, Monu?nents, and Inscriptions. 

enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at 
it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and 
will draw out a sword after you: and your land 
shall be desolate and your cities waste. Then 
shall the land enjoy her sabbaths as long as it lieth 
desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even 
then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths/' 
(Lev. xxvi. 31-34.) Nineteen centuries of war 
and ruin and pillage have passed over it, and to- 
day she sits desolate and despairing. Her terraces 
are broken down, her hillsides are bare and rocky, 
and everywhere, on plain and mountain, in rocky 
desert and on beetling crag, are seen the dreary 
ruins of cities and villages. The land is mourning 
for her exiles, who are scattered throughout the 
world, the people of "the wandering foot and 
weary breast." 



CHAPTER XVII. 
Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. 

Walls of the Temple Area — The Haram — Solomon's Stables — 
The Chief Corner Stone — Fragments of Pottery — An An- 
cient Signet Stone — The Royal Quarries. 

While the sites of many ancient cities and towns 
have been found in the Holy Land, archaeologists 
have largely devoted their efforts to excavations 
in and around Jerusalem. Nor need we wonder 
at this, for it is the sacred city of the world, and 
a place of more intense interest than any other 
locality on earth. Its checkered history is unpar- 
alleled, embracing a period of nearly four thou- 
sand years. As shown by the Tel-el-Amarna 
tablets, it was a city devoted to the worship of 
"the Mighty King" before the conquest of Ca- 
naan, and flourished in the days of Abraham and 
Melchizedek. The Salem of Melchizedek, the 
Jebus of the Canaanites, and the Jerusalem of 
David, it has stood twenty-seven sieges, and more 
battles have waged around its walls than around 
those of any other city in all the world. Babylo- 
nians, Assyrians, and Egyptians have in turn come 
up against it, to be followed by Roman and Sara- 
cen, Crusader and Turk, who, one and all, have 
laid waste the holy city, till more than once there 
has not been left one stone upon another that was 
not thrown down. The ancient city is buried as 

(-'07) 



208 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

completely as was Pompeii, and seven times has 
Jerusalem been entirely destroyed, the present one 
being the eighth city, and these eight cities lie one 
upon another like the strata of the rock-ribbed 
hills. In the year 136 the Emperor Hadrian en- 
tirely destroyed it and plowed up the site, erected 
a statue to Jupiter where the temple of Solomon 
had stood, and built a new town which he called 
JEWsi Capitolina, and for several generations after- 
wards Jesusalem was only spoken of under this 
heathen name. Jerome says that equestrian stat- 
ues of Hadrian were placed on the site of the 
Holy of Holies, together with an idol of Jove. 
These were still standing in A.D. 333, and an in- 
scription on a stone now built upside down into 
the south wall of the temple inclosure bears the 
name of Hadrian, and probably belonged to one 
of these statues. Constantine restored its ancient 
name, built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 
A.D. 333, and adorned it with other splendid edi- 
fices. Since that time, to Christian, Jew, and Mo- 
hammedan it has been a place of yearly pilgrim- 
age. But there is not a house standing in the city 
to-day which was there in our Lord's life. Forty 
feet beneath the Via Dolorosa are Roman pave- 
ments, over which passed the victorious legions 
nearly two thousand years ago, and the dust of 
the city is thick with the ashes of a hundred gen- 
erations. With the crown taken from her head 
and no son to restore her fallen greatness, it may 
be said of her even more than of Rome: 



Jerusalem mid Solomon's Temple. 209 

The Niobe of nations, there she stands, 
Crownless and childless in her voiceless woe! 

The most interesting excavations which have 
been made in Jerusalem are those in connection 
with the walls of the temple area. This temple 
area is not only the most interesting locality in or * 
about Jerusalem, but it is in many respects the 
most important to the Christian world. Says Dr. 
Thomson in "The Land and the Book": 

" It was to the spot on Mount Moriah that the Fa- 
ther of the Faithful came to offer up his firstborn 
and well-beloved son Isaac. That area includes the 
threshing-floor where the angel that was about to 
destroy Jerusalem stood, and which David was 
commanded to purchase from Araunah the Jebu- 
site, that he might rear an altar there to the Lord, 
and offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon 
it. * So the Lord was entreated for the land, and 
the plague was stayed from Israel,' as we read in 
the last chapter of Second Samuel. 

" The next remarkable scene that occurred there 
was the dedication of the temple by King Solo- 
mon. For seven long years that glorious edifice 
slowly grew up in strange and solemn stillness, 
for 'there was neither hammer, nor ax, nor any 
tool of iron heard in the house while it was build- 
ing/ . . . After a little more than four hun- 
dred years the holy house was burned and over- 
thrown by the Babylonians, and continued deso- . 
late for more than a century, when there was 
another grand dedication of the rebuilt temple, 
M 



210 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

and again that area must have been crowded with 
the remnants of the Hebrew nation that had re- 
turned from the captivity at the dedication of the 
restored walls of Jerusalem, as recorded in the 
twelfth chapter of Nehemiah. After the lapse of 
four troubled centuries, the holy house was again 
restored — forty and six years was it in building — 
and dedicated by Herod the Great. Another cen- 
tury passed away, and then came the Romans 
under Titus. Jerusalem and the Jewish nation 
were destroyed with horrors unparalleled in the 
history of the world; the temple was sacked, pil- 
laged, burned, and utterly overthrown, so that not 
one stone of the temple proper was left upon 
another, as foretold by Christ." 

But the outer walls of the temple area, built by 
Solomon, still remain. Solomon laid the founda- 
tions of the eastern and western walls on the solid 
rock near the foot of the mountain on each side, 
and built them straight up until their tops were on 
a level with the summit of the mountain. These 
walls were consequently very high, and in his ex- 
plorations Sir Charles Warren and his fellow-la- 
borers sank one shaft at the northeast corner near 
St. Stephen's Gate, which was one hundred and 
twenty-five feet below the present surface. The 
most important shaft was sunk about one hundred 
feet east of what is called the Tower of Antonia, 
which is at the northeast angle of the temple 
area. After going down a considerable depth, a 
horizontal gallery was opened toward the sane- 



Jerusalem and Solomon s Tern fie. 211 

tuary wall, striking the tower at a point about 
forty feet beneath the surface. At a considerably 
greater depth the foundations were reached, and 
it was found that the rock was cut away to form a 
level bed for the stones. Everywhere on the na- 
tive rock were traces of the work of men who 
probably lived in the early days of the Jewish 
monarchy. Nearly one hundred feet below the 
surface some Phoenician characters were found 
painted in red color on one of the stones, and in 
one character a trickling of the paint was seen on 
the upper side, showing that the characters were 
painted before the stone was placed in its present 
position. We have here a confirmation of the 
Bible statement that Hiram, king of Tyre, sent 
artificers and hewers to Solomon to assist in the 
building of the temple. 

These excavations have demonstrated the enor- 
mous height of the temple walls, and show that 
in the time of our Lord we could stand on the 
wall of what was called the Royal Cloister, and 
look down into the bed of the Kidron at the as- 
tounding depth of over three hundred feet. This 
confirms the statement of Josephus that the east- 
ern wall of the temple was so high that " if anyone 
looked down from the top of the battlements he 
would be giddy, while his sight could not reach to 
such an immense depth." The debris of centuries 
has so filled up the Kidron valley that we do not 
wonder this statement of Josephus was discredited, 
until the excavations have proved its truth. It 



212 Mounds, Monuments, and lnscr if lions. 

was doubtless this lofty " pinnacle of the temple " 
where Satan took our Lord in the temptation, and 
said to him: "If thou be the Son of God, cast 
thyself down, for it is written, He shall give his 
angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands 
they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash 
thy foot against a stone.' ' 

When Solomon erected those great walls he 
filled up all the intervening space and leveled it, 
so as to form a smooth area of thirty-six acres. 
This temple area is now called the Haram, and 
the Mosque of Omar is supposed to occupy the 
site of Solomon's temple. In order to avoid fill- 
ing all this space up solidly, stone piers were built 
in the Kidron valley, over which semi-circular 
arches of masonry were turned, and others on 
top of these to the height of one hundred and 
twenty-five feet, while the whole was covered with 
earth and appeared as the rest of the area. This 
immense underground space is called "Solomon's 
Stables," and he may have kept his horses and 
chariots there, for it is said that he had "forty 
thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and 
twelve thousand horsemen." As a matter of 
fact, these vaults were used as stables by the 
Frank kings and the Knights Templar, and holes 
in which rings were fastened can still be traced on 
some of the piers. 

In all the excavations that have been made it is 
found that the builders laid the foundations of the 
walls on the native rock, thus demonstrating that 



Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. 213 

the words of the Psalmist were literally true when 
he said of Jesusalem, "Her foundations are upon 
the holy hills." Isaiah also speaks of the "sure 
foundation " of Zion. Paul, speaking of the 
Church of Christ, declares: "As a wise master 
builder I have laid the foundation, and another 
buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed 
how he buildeth thereupon. For other founda- 
tion can no man lay than that is laid, which is Je- 
sus Christ." 

At the bottom of the southeast angle of the tem- 
ple wall has been found a foundation stone, which 
is believed to be the chief corner stone of the great 
wall of the temple, and w r hich therefore possesses 
the most intense interest. This stone is three 
feet eight inches high and fourteen feet in length, 
squared and polished, with a finely dressed face. 
It was dressed in the quarry in a somewhat pecul- 
iar style, with a view to its being the foundation 
corner stone. The Bible contains many interest- 
ing allusions to this corner stone. The Psalmist 
declares: " The stone which the builders refused 
is become the headstone of the corner." Isaiah 
says: "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a 
stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a 
sure foundation." Our Lord also quotes the 
Psalmist's words and applies them to himself. 
(Matt. xxi. 42.) St. Peter boldly rebuked the 
elders of the Sanhedrin for their persecution of 
Christ, saying : ' * This is the stone which was set at 
naught of you builders, which is become the head 



214 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

of the corner." And he also quotes the words of 
Isaiah, applying them directly to Christ: "Be- 
hold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, 
precious ; and he that believeth on him shall not 
be confounded." Paul describes the Church of 
Christ as a vast temple, of which every Christian 
is a stone, and declares that they are "built upon 
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Je- 
sus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, 
in whom all the building fitly framed together 
groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." This 
stone, therefore, being a representative of Christ, 
is the most interesting stone in all the world. 

All these discoveries confirm the declaration re- 
garding the foundations of Solomon's temple in 
i Kings v. 17, 18: "And the king commanded, 
and they brought great stones, costly stones, and 
hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. 
And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did 
hew them, and the stone-squarers : so they pre- 
pared timber and stones to build the house." This 
biblical account accurately describes the massive 
masonry which has been found at the southeast 
angle, eighty feet below the present surface. The 
excavators found buried under the debris of many 
centuries "great stones, costly stones, and hewed 
stones," on which were laid the foundation of the 
temple wall; and on many of these massive 
blocks Phoenician marks were painted, showing 
that some of them were wrought by the cunning 
workmen of Hiram, king of Tyre. As a con- 



Jerusalem and Solomon *s Temple. 215 

firmation of the Phoenician character of these in- 
scriptions, similar marks have been found on the 
tomb of Ashmunazar, king of Sidon, who died 
about 600 B.C. 

Near this corner stone there was found a small 
earthenware jar, which resembles some jars found 
in Cyprus of Graeco-Phoenician pattern. This 
jar was standing upright in a hole cut out of the 
rock for its reception, and it was doubtless con- 
nected with the ceremony of laying the corner 
stone. As the tabernacle and all its furniture 
were consecrated to God by being anointed with 
holy oil, so it is almost certain that the foundation 
stone of the temple was anointed in the same 
way; and it is reasonable to suppose that this an- 
tique jar contained the holy oil for the consecra- 
tion of the foundations, and was therefore placed 
by the anointed stone. 

Fragments of pottery were picked up in the 
mold close by, among which were seven jar han- 
dles, on six of which were found Phoenician in- 
scriptions, w r ith a winged disk, representing the 
sun and its refulgent beams. We know that the 
sun god was the chief deity of Phoenicia, and 
from that country the worship of Baal was intro- 
duced into the kingdom of Israel. One of these 
inscriptions has been interpreted as meaning "To 
King Zepha," and another "To King Shat," 
though there is no historical record of either of 
these kings. This broken pottery recalls David's 
song of triumph in honor of his conquest over the 



2i6 Mounds , Monuments , and Inscriptions. 

Jebusites and the establishment of his throne upon 
the "holy hill of Zion," in the second Psalm, 
where he says, "Thou shalt dash them in pieces 
like a potter's vessel. " Isaiah also says, "He 
shall break it as the breaking of the potter's ves- 
sel that is broken in pieces"; and Jeremiah de- 
clares, "Even so will I break this people and this 
city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel." 

In the southwest section of the south wall, ten 
feet under the pavement, and twenty-two feet under 
the present surface, was found a signet stone or 
seal, with an inscription engraved in old Hebrew 
letters: "Haggai, son of Shebaniah." From the 
forms of the letters this signet is supposed to be 
at least as early as the sixth or seventh century 
B.C. While there are no means of identifying 
this Haggai, yet we know that Haggai, the 
prophet, was one of the exiles in Babylon who re- 
turned with Zerubbabel about 535 B.C. and en- 
couraged his countrymen in the building of the 
second temple. There is no mention of his fa- 
ther's name, and Haggai is the only one of the 
minor prophets who makes mention of a signet. 
He says in the last words of his prophecy: "Thus 
saith the Lord, I will make thee as a signet; for I 
have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts." 

What are called the Royal Quarries of Jerusa- 
lem, which lie underneath the northern part of the 
holy city, undoubtedly furnished the stone from 
which were built the temple of Solomon, the gi- 
gantic wall of the temple area, and the walls en- 



Jerusalem and Solomon '5 Temple. 217 

compassing the city. These quarries had been 
hidden for many centuries, and were discovered 
in 1852 by Dr. Barclay, through the agency of his 
little dog who found an entrance into them. This 
entrance is near the Damascus Gate, on the north 
side of the city, and consists of a very low aper- 
ture, which can only be entered by stooping. 
The quarries extend for a long distance under the 
city, and consist of vast and spacious subterra- 
nean corridors, often broadening out into vast 
chambers, which were formed by the native rock 
being taken out for building purposes. These 
corridors are in many places steep and slippery, 
and often there are great hollows which have 
been excavated, into which there is great danger 
of falling. Everywhere the surface is rough and 
uneven, while the rocky pillars left +0 prop up the 
roof resemble the massive columns of a Norman 
cathedral. In the walls and overhead chisel 
marks and masons' marks are everywhere to be 
seen, and the chips from the hewn rocks lie thick 
under your feet. Large fragments of quarried 
stone lie all around, while several massive blocks 
half cut still adhere to the wall. The stone con- 
sists of a hard limestone, which when polished is 
almost as pure and beautiful as marble. The 
stone is of the same quality as that seen in the 
temple wall, and there is no question but that in 
these quarries the stones for the temple were 
hewn and prepared, each ready to be fitted into 
its place, so that 



218 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

No ax was heard, no ponderous hammer rung; 
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung. 

The statement made in the First Book of Kings 
(vi. 7) finds a striking confirmation in the fact 
that no stone chips have been found anywhere 
near the walls or on the foundation rocks, but 
only broken pottery and fragments of ancient 
lamps for burning fat. If the stones had been 
chipped and chiseled as they were laid on the 
wall, there would certainly have been found frag- 
ments of the stones lying about. The stone was 
"made ready before it was brought thither," and 
was carried through the Asmonoean valley and 
then dragged up the western slope of Mount Mo- 
riah. How wonderfully all these discoveries 
which are being made confirm the statements in 
the Word of God ! 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
Herod's Temple and the Pool of Bethesda. 

The Double Gate of Herod's Temple — Inscription on Stone 
Forbidding Foreigners to Enter the Temple — Paul's Expe- 
rience — Pool of Bethesda — A Roman Woman Healed. 

The second temple built by Zerubbabel and the 
Jewish exiles on their return from Babylon stood 
on Mount Moriah for five centuries, but it had 
greatly decayed when Herod the Great became 
king of Judea. In the year 20 B.C. Herod, to 
please the Jews, began to reconstruct it, and at 
great labor and expense erected a magnificent edi- 
fice, which in many features surpassed the great 
temple of Solomon. The more sacred portions 
were completed in eight years, but the entire build- 
ing was not finished until the year A.D. 63, only a 
few years before its final destruction. Our Lord 
prophesied the total destruction of this temple when 
he made his triumphal entry into the holy city, 
and within forty years Christ's prediction was ter- 
ribly fulfilled. 

Several vestiges of the magnificent temple of 
Herod have been brought to light. Among them 
is the Double Gate, called also the Huldah Gate, 
because it is thought to be the Huldah Gate of the 
Talmud. It is a very prominent feature in the 
south wall, and is situated about a hundred }^ards 
from the southwest angle. There is a vestibule 

(219) 



220 Mounds , Monuments , and Inscriptions* 

within the Double Gate which is Herodian work. 
This vestibule, or chamber, is sixty-three feet long 
and forty-two feet wide. In the center is a huge 
monolithic column, twenty-one feet high and six 
and a half in diameter, its capital being adorned 
with peculiar ornamentation. This column is a 
vestige of Jewish masonry, dating from the time 
of Herod. 

The most important discovery which has been 
made, however, of anything relating to the Hero- 
dian temple is a stone on which is an inscription of 
seven lines in Greek characters, of which the fol- 
lowing is a translation : " No foreigner to proceed 
within the partition wall and inclosure around the 
sanctuary; whoever is caught in the same will on 
that account be liable to incur death." This in- 
scription is not written in pure Greek, but the 
words are such as were used in the time of Christ, 
when the purity of the Greek tongue had passed 
away, and a number of degenerate words were 
used by the residents of Judea. 

To understand this inscription it is necessary to 
recall a plan which Herod adopted when erecting 
the temple. A great many of the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem at that time were Gentiles, and while 
Herod knew that the Jews would not be willing to 
admit any outside their own nationality into the 
temple proper, he yet felt that, on the ground of 
policy, he must give some part of the sanctuary for 
the. use of those of other nationalities. Hence he 
constructed a large outer court, open to Romans, 



Herod's Temfle and Pool of Bethesda. 221 

Greeks, and people of all nations and creeds, 
which he therefore called the Court of the Gentiles. 
Within this was the Court of the Israelites, into 
which no Gentile was permitted to enter. Jose- 
phus says that these two courts were separated by 
a low wall or balustrade, about four and a half feet 
high, and that on the top of this partition stone 
square pillars were placed at intervals, each bear- 
ing an inscription in Greek forbidding any stran- 
ger to come into the Court of the Israelites, under 
penalty of death. There is no doubt but that this 
inscribed tablet, recently found, is one of those de- 
scribed by Josephus, and it has now been brought 
to light after having been buried in oblivion for 
nineteen hundred years. 

This is not only a vindication of the historical 
accuracy of Josephus, but it throws light upon a 
number of passages in the New Testament. This 
explains wiry, under the very shadow of the Tower 
of Antonia, with its Roman governor and Roman 
garrison, our Lord could drive out the merchants 
and money-changers from the precincts of the tem- 
ple. The word " temple " here is in the original 
to Up6v, the very term found in the newly discovered 
tablet, and also the word translated " sanctuary" 
in Josephus. These traders and money-changers 
were violating the law, for they had entered into 
the Israelitish court, and any zealous Jew had the 
authority to drive them back into the outer Court 
of the Gentiles, and appeal to the Romans to have 
the law enforced. 



222 Mounds, Monuments , and Inscriptions. 

This tablet also explains a dramatic incident in 
the life of Paul. He had taken with him to Jeru- 
salem an Ephesian convert named Trophimus, and 
the Jews accused the apostle of taking his friend 
into the Court of the Israelites. They raised a great 
tumult, stirring up all the people, and laid their 
hands on Paul, crying: "Men of Israel, help! 
This is the man that teacheth all men eve^where 
against the people, and the law, and this place; 
and further, brought Greeks also into the temple 
[to te/jov], and hath polluted this holy place [for 
they had seen before with him, in the city, Trophi- 
mus, an Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul 
had brought into the temple, to Upov'j." There 
was a great uproar, and they were about to kill 
Paul for having violated the law by taking a for- 
eigner into the Court of the Israelites, when the 
apostle was saved by the chief captain and his 
band of soldiers. 

We also find in this tablet new light on a passage 
in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians where, in the sec- 
ond chapter, he declares that the Gentiles who had 
been "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel 
and strangers from the covenant of promise,' ' are 
brought into new relations. " For he is our peace, 
who hath made both one, and hath broken down 
the middle wall of partition between us." Does 
he not by this "middle wall of partition" refer to 
that balustrade, with the inscribed tablets threat- 
ening death to a foreigner, which separated the 
Court of the Gentiles from that of the Israelites? 



Herod 's Tcmfle and Pool of Bethesda. 223 

There seems to be a confirmation of this opinion 
in the words with which Paul closes this chapter, 
where he draws an imagery from the chief corner 
stone and the walls of the temple: "Now, there- 
fore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but 
fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the house- 
hold of God; and are built upon the foundation of 
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself be- 
ing the chief corner stone ; in whom all the build- 
ing fitly framed together groweth unto a holy tem- 
ple in the Lord." 

The discovery of the site of the Pool of Be- 
thesda has been of very great interest. John de- 
scribes, in the fifth chapter of his Gospel, one of 
our Lord's greatest miracles as taking place at 
this pool. He says: "Now there is at Jerusalem, 
by the sheep market, a pool, which is called in 
the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. 
In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of 
blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of 
the water. And a certain man was there, which 
had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Je- 
sus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a 
long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou 
be made whole? The impotent man answered 
him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troub- 
led, to put me into the pool; but while I am com- 
ing, another steppeth down before me. Jesus 
saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. 
And immediately the man was made whole." 

This pool has been found near the Church of 



224 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Saint Anne, where tradition has located the house 
of the mother of Mary, calling it Beth Anna, 
"House of Mary," which expression has the same 
meaning as Bethesda, both of them signifying 
"House of Mercy." Between the temple area 
and the street leading to Saint Stephen's Gate lies 
an abyss eighty or more feet deep, out of which 
the Birket Israel has been formed. PJsing out of 
this on the north the rock soon culminates in a 
ridge, on which the Church of Saint Anne rests, 
over its rock-hewn grotto. From the crest of this 
ridge the rock slopes away again toward the 
northwest; and there, in the bottom of the little 
vale, lay the Pool of Bethesda. 

Leading forth out of the court surrounding the 
Church of Saint Anne is a newly opened passage- 
way, about twenty-five feet long, which conducts 
to the Court of the Pool. The pool is fifty-five 
feet long from east to west, and measures twelve 
and a half feet in breadth. The pool is arched 
in by five arches, while five corresponding porches 
ran along the side of the pool. The crusaders 
built a church over this pool, and they seem to 
have been so far impressed by the fact of five 
arches below that they shaped their crypt into 
five arches in imitation. They left an opening for 
getting down to the water, and further, as a crown- 
ing proof that they regarded the pool as Bethesda, 
they painted on the wall of the crypt a fresco rep- 
resenting the angel as troubling the water. 

A flight of twenty-four steps leads from the 



Herod's Temfle and Pool of Bethesda. 225 

porches down to the bottom of the pool. As it 
appears to-day, this pool has the same dimensions 
as the series of porches overhead, or the church 
still higher up; its rocky bed is uneven, but slopes 
to the west; it still contains some water, even in 
dry seasons, and more at others. 

Just as the Fountain of the Virgin, under the 
village of Siloam, is now supplied, so, in the times 
of the Messiah, this pool was fed by an intermit- 
tent stream; for, apparently, they both lie upon 
one and the same water course, which in the days 
of Jerome also was observed "not to flow steadily, 
but to ebulliate at certain hours and on certain 
days, and to come through subterranean hollows 
and caverns in the hardest rock with great noise. " 

A sister pool has also been discovered, lying at 
the western end of the first one, six feet away, 
and ranging in the same line ; it is sixty-four feet 
long by sixteen wide, and is arched overhead. 
Three manholes communicate with the surface of 
the ground above, making it a matter of only one 
story, and showing it to be higher than its fellow, 
or about on a level with the five-porch story in the 
"House of Mercy." Eusebius, writing in the 
fourth century, refers to these twin pools. And 
the Bordeaux Pilgrim, in 333 A.D., speaking of 
two great pools at the side of the temple, says: 
"They have five porches, and are called Beth- 
saida. Here the sick of many years were wont to 
be healed." 

^ A very surprising and interesting discovery was 
15 



226 Afounds, Monuments ', and Inscriptions. 

made recently while excavating and clearing up 
this historic place, which is a remarkable corrob- 
oration of the gospel statement regarding the 
healing properties of this water. From the dis- 
covery made, we know that when this pool was 
in the height of its vigor, a Roman lady who 
needed its curative properties visited this won- 
der-working font. She was one of the "lame" 
spoken of in the Gospel narrative. Believing, she 
joined the eager crowd and succeeded in first 
reaching the mysteriously troubled water. In an 
instant she was healed ! And she walked away as 
ably and as joyously as the impotent man restored 
by Jesus himself. To leave a permanent testimo- 
nial of her gratitude as well as a tangible evidence 
of the marvelous cure effected, she had a facsim- 
ile of the healed foot carved out of white marble, 
and on this she had an inscription engraved, re- 
cording her heartfelt thanks, giving her name 
Pompeia, and stating the fact that she was healed 
at the Pool of Bethesda ! This she brought to the 
House of Mercy, and left it there as a memento. 
And now after all these centuries, when the five 
porches of the Pool of Bethesda Were uncovered, 
this duplicate of Pompeia' s revivified foot was 
picked up out of the rubbish of the ages, as a 
wonderful commentary on the narrative in John's 
Gospel, and is preserved as a priceless treasure 
in the Louvre at Paris. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
The Siloam Inscription. 

The Pool of Siloam — References in Isaiah and in the Psalms — 
Discovery of the Inscription by Boys — Translation of the 
Inscription — The Virgin's Fountain — A Smaller Tunnel. 

The Pool of Siloam is one of the spots in Jerusa- 
lem which has been identified through all these 
nineteen hundred years. While the present pool 
is of comparatively modern construction, it incloses 
the remains of a reservoir which was undoubtedly 
constructed by King Hezekiah. This pool was the 
one from which a priest brought water in a golden 
pitcher on the last day, the great day, of the feast 
of the tabernacles, and poured it on the altar 
amid the shouts of the rejoicing multitude. It was 
to this pool that our Lord sent the blind man to 
wash, and Isaiah had reference to it when he said, 
" With joy shall ye draw water from the well of sal- 
vation." The Psalmist also had these flowing wa- 
ters in his mind when he sang, " There is a river the 
streams whereof make glad the city of God, the 
holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High." 

The Pool of Siloam was within the ancient walls 
of Jerusalem, at the mouth of the Tyropoeon valley. 
It was, and still is, supplied with water by a spring 
some hundreds of yards away, and without the 
city's bounds, called the Virgin's Fountain, the 
only natural spring of water in or near Jerusalem. 

(«7) 



228 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

It rises below the walls of the city, on the western 
bank of the valley of the Kidron, and its intermit- 
tent waters have been carried for full twenty-six 
hundred years to the pool by a tunnel cut through 
the projecting spur of Ophel, one of the hills on 
which the ancient Jerusalem stood. This tun- 
nel, according to Major Conder's measurement, is 
about one thousand seven hundred and eight feet 
in length, though it does not run in a straight line. 
At the entrance, on the western or Siloam side, its 
height is about sixteen feet, but the height gradu- 
ally lessens until in one place it is not quite two 
feet above the floor of the passage. Dr. Robin- 
son and Captain Warren have both crept through 
the entire tunnel, so that the connection is abso- 
lutely certain. 

In. the summer of 18S0 a very important and in- 
teresting discovery was made of an inscription on 
the wall of this conduit. Some boys were playing 
in the Pool of Siloam, and one of them fell into the 
water as he was wading up the tunnel. As he 
rose up, he saw what looked like letters on the 
rock which formed the southern wall of the tunnel. 
The discovery was reported, and it was found that 
an ancient inscription was engraved on the lower 
part of an artificial tablet cut in the wall of the 
rock, about nineteen feet from the place where the 
subterranean conduit opens out upon the Pool of 
Siloam, and on the right-hand side as one enters it. 
As the place where the inscription is engraved is 
perfectly dark, and those who tried to read it had 



The St loam Inscription. 229 

to sit in the mud and water and hold candles to see 
it, it was no easy task to attempt to decipher it. 
But the indefatigable labors of the archaeologists at 
last succeeded in getting a complete facsimile of 
the inscription, and an exact copy of the old text 
is now in the hands of the scholars of Europe and 
this country. 

The inscription consists of six lines, though sev- 
eral of the letters have unfortunately been de- 
stroyed by the wearing away of the rock. The 
following is the translation: "[Behold] the exca- 
vations. Now this is the history of the excavation. 
"While the excavators were still lifting up the pick, 
each toward his neighbor, and while there were yet 
three cubits to [excavate, there was heard] the 
voice of one man calling to his neighbor, for there 
was an excess in the rock on the right hand [and 
on the left]. And after that on the day of excava- 
ting the excavators had struck pick against pick, 
one against another, the waters flowed from the 
spring to the pool for a distance of one thousand 
two hundred cubits. And [part] of a cubit was 
the height of the rock over the head of the exca- 
vators." / 

This inscription merely records the method of 
the execution of the tunnel, yet its importance, 
philologically and historically, is immense. We 
learn from it, also, something of the engineering 
skill of that day, which was by no means to be de- 
spised. The conduit was excavated b}' beginning 
the work simultaneously at both ends, just as is the 



230 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

custom in our day; and, notwithstanding its wind- 
ings, the workmen heard each other approaching 
and almost succeeded in meeting in the middle. 
There was a small intervening piece of rock which 
was removed, and this accounts for what are called 
the two culs de sac now found in the center of the 
tunnel. They show where the two bands of exca- 
vators, instead of meeting, were about to pass by 
one another. This was the " excess in the rock" 
to which the inscription refers. 

The most interesting feature of this inscription 
is that the form and general character of the letters 
prove that it is the most ancient specimen of He- 
brew, next to that of the Moabite Stone, that we pos- 
sess; and it proves that the language of the Israel- 
ites about 700 B.C. was that same pure Hebrew 
which is used in the earlier books of the Jewish 
Scriptures. It is the general opinion of scholars 
that this rock-hewn tunnel, which has so long con- 
veyed the waters of the Virgin's Fountain to the 
Pool of Siloam, was constructed by King Heze- 
kiah. In 2 Chronicles xxxii. 30 it is said that " Hez- 
ekiah stopped the upper water course of Gihon, 
and brought it straight down to the west side of the 
city of David"; and in 2 Kings xx. 20 it is said 
that he "made a pool, and a conduit, and brought 
water into the city." 

We can easily understand why this conduit was 
built. The Virgin's Spring, being the only natural 
spring near Jerusalem, and lying outside the walls, 
might in time of war easily pass into the hands of 



The Siloam Inscription. 231 

the enemy. Hence Hezekiah sought to seal up 
this spring, and bring its waters by subterranean 
passages inside the city walls. A proof of the his- 
torical accuracy of the statement of the Chronicles, 
in the thirty-second chapter and thirtieth verse, is 
in the fact that recently explorers have found what 
they believe to be the very plug — a plug of stone — 
with which Hezekiah shut off these waters so that 
they might be of no advantage to Sennacherib dur- 
ing his siege of Jerusalem. 

Fixing the excavating of this tunnel in the days 
of Hezekiah raises the question, How could Isaiah 
in the time of Ahaz, Hezekiah' s father, speak of 
" the waters of Shiloah which go softly"? This 
question has been answered by the discovery of a 
smaller tunnel, which follows a straighter course, 
and which was probably built in the days of Solo- 
mon. This, doubtless, carried the intermittent 
waters of the Virgin's Spring to the Pool of Si- 
loam when Isaiah prophesied in the days of Ahaz. 
This smaller conduit, disused for twenty-six hun- 
dred years, and now laid bare some twenty feet 
below the ground, is undoubtedly the original of 
"Shiloah's waters which go softly. " ^ 

"One fact," says Professor Sayce, "is made 
very clear, whether it were the Siloam tunnel itself 
or the second tunnel leading from it to a lower res- 
ervoir that was constructed by Hezekiah — in either 
case the Pool of Siloam would lie on the west side 
of the city of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30). 'The 
city of David' must accordingly have stood on the 



232 Mounds, Monuments y and Inscriptions. 

southern hill, the so-called Ophel; and since the 
city of David was identical with Zion, according to 
2 Samuel v. 7, this hill must represent the original 
Mount of Zion. Consequently the valley of the 
sons of Hinnom must be the valley which was 
known in the time of Josephus as the Tyropoeon or 
Cheesemaker's. It once divided both the temple 
hill and the southern hill from the mountains on 
the west, though it is now choked with the rub- 
bish which the numerous destroyers of Jerusalem 
have thrown into it. In some places the rubbish is 
more than seventy feet deep, and under it, if any- 
where, we must look for the tombs of the kings 
that were cut in the rocky cliff of the city of David. 
Here too, if anywhere, will be found the relics of 
the temple and palace that Nebuchadrezzar de- 
stroyed, overlaid with the accumulations of more 
than two thousand years. 



CHAPTER XX. 
A Lost Empire Recovered. 

The Hittites Mentioned in No History Save the Scriptures — 
Monuments and Inscriptions Recently Discovered Giving 
Their History — Burckhardt's Discovery — A Mighty People 
— Thothmes III. and his Thirteen Victories — Great Victory 
by Rameses II. — An Epic Poem — First Peace Treaty — Hit- 
tites Destroyed by Sargon. 

It seems a strange and almost unaccountable 
thing that one of the greatest and most powerful 
nations of the ancient world should have been ab- 
solutely forgotten, and that not a single historian 
outside of the Bible should have made any men- 
tion of it. The facts regarding the history of an- 
cient Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria were un- 
known to us until the discoveries of the last few 
years and the decipherment of the hieroglyphic 
and cuneiform inscriptions, but the names at least 
of these empires always remained, with some tra- 
ditional echo of their greatness; whereas no one 
had ever heard or dreamed of a great empire 
which had once existed in western Asia and had 
contended on equal terms with both Egypt and 
Assyria, the founders of which were the little no- 
ticed Hittites of the Old Testament. Still less did 
any one imagine that these same Hittites had con- 
tributed largely to the early civilization and cul- 
ture of Greece and Europe, and that they had 
carried their religion and art to the shores of the 

033; 



234 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

JEgean. According to the inscriptions which 
have been deciphered, their power first mani- 
fested itself about 1600 B.C., when, having in- 
vaded Syria and Palestine from the far north, 
they rose to a strength equal to that of Egypt, 
and maintained their power for nearly nine hun- 
dred years, when they disappeared after Sargon 
had destroyed their last stronghold. 

While the Hittites are only mentioned incident- 
ally a number of times in the historic books of the 
Old Testament, yet all that is said indicates that 
they were a great and mighty people. It is said 
in Genesis x. 15 that "Canaan begat Heth," the 
Hittites being the sons of Heth, and therefore 
originally Canaanites. The first time the name 
Hittites occurs is in Genesis xv. 20, where God 
made a covenant with Abraham giving him the 
land from the river of Egypt unto the river Eu- 
phrates, the land which belonged to the Canaan- 
ites, the Hittites, the Amorites, and other people. 
The next mention is where Abraham purchased 
from Ephron the Hittite the field and the cave of 
Machpelah in which to bury his dead. Then, a 
little later, a domestic incident occurred which has 
been repeated in all the ages since, and which par- 
ents will understand and appreciate — Esau mar- 
ried Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and 
Bashemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, 
"which was a grief of mind unto Isaac and Re- 
bekah." A number of similar alliances were aft- 
erwards made between the Israelites and these 



A Lost Empire Recovered. 235 

people, some of which were sinful and wicked 
and resulted in great trouble. Bathsheba, the 
wife of Uriah the Hittite, who caused the fearful 
fall of David, was probably herself a Hittite, 
which would bring the Hittites in the line of our 
Lord's ancestry. These Hittites had many deal- 
ings with Solomon, and some of their daughters 
he took as his wives; and when he imported 
horses from Egypt he sold some to the Hittite 
kings. When God sent a panic upon the camp 
of the Syrians before Samaria, they fled for their 
lives in the night, leaving everything behind them, 
because they imagined that the king of Israel had 
hired against them the kings of the Hittites and the 
kings of the Egyptians (2 Kings vii. 6). Surely 
nothing could show more forcibly that at the time 
of this piece of history the Hittites were a great 
and warlike people, with whom even the great 
Ben-hadad did not care to measure arms. He- 
bron, which was built seven years before Zoan, or 
Tanis, the capital of the Hyksos conquerors of 
Egypt, was a Hittite city, and Ezekiel says that 
Jerusalem had a Hittite mother (Ezek. xvi. 3). 

These incidental notices of the Hittites in the 
Scriptures are the only mentions made of them in 
any ancient literature or history which existed 
prior to recent discoveries. An overhasty criti- 
cism denied the existence of this race as a people 
of any importance, and said that if there ever was 
such a people they were only one of many Pales- 
tinian tribes. That the history of so great a na- 



236 Mounds ) Monuments^ and Inscriptions, 

tion, which exercised so powerful and wide- 
spread an influence for nearly a thousand years, 
should have been completely obliterated, is one of 
the marvels of the world ; and no discoveries of 
recent years have proved so complete a vindica- 
tion of Scripture as the monuments and records 
which have raised this long-buried empire from its 
forgotten grave. 

Discoveries began to be made in 1872 which 
first revealed the existence of the Hittite empire 
and the important part it had taken in the history 
of civilization. The great traveler Burckhardt 
made the first discovery of hieroglyphic inscrip- 
tions at Hamath, and Dr. William Wright, then a 
missionary at Damascus, sent casts of the inscrip- 
tions to England, and suggested their Hittite ori- 
gin. This conjecture was afterwards confirmed 
by the discovery of similar inscriptions at Jera- 
blus, the site of the ancient Carchemish, which 
was known from Egyptian inscriptions to be a 
city of the Hittites. Other monuments were 
found with similar inscriptions, and this was prac- 
tically the discovery of this vanished empire. 
Since then many other discoveries have been 
made on the native Hittite monuments and in the 
recently discovered Egyptian and Assyrian litera- 
ture. On the sculptured figure in the Pass of 
Karabel, in which Herodotus had seen an image 
of Sesostris, that is Rameses II., the great oppo- 
nent of the Hittites, it was found that all the char- 
acters were of Hittite forms. Professor Sayce 



A Lost E 7ii fire Recovered. 237 

says: "Hittite inscriptions have since been dis- 
covered attached to another archaic monument of 
Lydia, the sitting figure of the great goddess of 
Carchemish, carved out of the rocks of Mount 
Sipylos, which the Greeks fancied was the Niobe 
of their mythology as far back as the age of 
Homer; and similar inscriptions also exist at Bog- 
haz Keni, and Eyak, in Cappadocia, as well as 
near Ivris, in Lycaonia. Others have been dis- 
covered in various parts of Cappadocia and in the 
Taurus range of mountains, while a silver boss, 
which bears a precious inscription both in Hittite 
hieroglyphics and in cuneiform characters, seems 
to belong to Cilicia." 

From all these sources we now know that the 
Hittites were for centuries a warlike and conquer- 
ing race, rulers over a very large territory which 
contained many different peoples, and not only 
far more powerful than the Hebrews ever were, 
but able to cope with the greatest rulers both of 
Egypt and of Babylonia. At the height of their 
power their mighty empire extended over north- 
ern Syria and the whole of Asia Minor, with a 
fortified capital, Carchemish, on the Euphrates, to 
guard the eastern frontier, while its most westerly 
outposts were on the distant yEgean Sea. To 
the north it reached the shores of the Black Sea, 
and in the south it had the principal capital, Ka- 
desh, and other large towns on the Orontes, the 
chief river in Syria, extending its power at one 
period of its history even to the borders of Egypt. 



238 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Thus they were a mighty people before Moses 
floated on the Nile or Rameses lashed Israel to 
his burdens. Their conquest of Asia Minor was 
about 1600 B.C. They were the probable found- 
ers of Ephesus, Smyrna, and other prominent 
cities, and great " Diana of the Ephesians" was 
probably a Hittite goddess. The Amazons seem to 
have been Hittite priestesses, and DIonysius and 
his panther were copied from a Hittite god. 

While many Hittite monuments and inscrip- 
tions have been found, the Hittite language has 
not yet been deciphered, and the reading of these 
inscriptions is the great puzzle now before orien- 
tal scholars. Professor Sayce says he has tried 
every possible and impossible combination that 
has come to his mind, and that, until we can dis- 
cover a bilingual text of some length, we shall not 
be able to read any connected Hittite text pho- 
netically; although, thanks to the employment of 
ideograms, it may be possible to get a general 
idea of the signification of an inscription. 

All the information we have with regard to the 
Hittite, except what the Scriptures have told us, 
comes from the Egyptian and Assyrian manu- 
scripts and monuments and from the pictures on 
the Hittite monuments. From the Egyptian in- 
scriptions we learn that before the days of the ex- 
odus the Egyptian monarchs had been engaged in 
fierce struggles with the powerful Hittites. One 
dynasty of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who 
ruled over Egypt was Hittije, according to Ma- 



A Lost Empire Recovered. 239 

riette ; and after their final expulsion from the Nile 
valley, Thothmes I. led his army not only into 
Syria, but as far as the banks of the Euphrates, 
which is called the "front of the land of the Hit- 
tites." Thothmes III., whose memorial is the fa- 
mous obelisk on the Thames embankment in Lon- 
don, tells on the walls of Thebes of thirteen vic- 
tories over the Hittites, describing in vivid lan- 
guage many of his battles. Rameses II. fought 
his most successful battles with the king of the 
Hittites at Kadesh, on the Orontes River, he hav- 
ing put the record of his victories in hieroglyph- 
ics and pictures on the walls of his temples. • So 
momentous was this struggle, in the opinion of the 
Egyptians, that a national epic in commemoration 
of it was composed by Pentaour, the poet lau- . 
reate — a poem which is worthy of being classed 
with the world's greatest epics, and which bears a 
date much more ancient than the epics of Homer. 
This poem, which was the most celebrated in 
all Egyptian literature, was published on a mag- 
nificent scale by Rameses, being issued upon 
sculptured stone and splendidly illustrated. Four 
copies of this poem have survived the wreck of 
nearly four thousand years, and may be read on 
the rock walls of the great temples of Luxor, Aby- 
dos, and Abou-Simbel, and the Rameseum of 
Thebes, where they are illustrated by thousands of 
figures skillfully executed in bas-relief. Another 
edition was issued on papyrus, a copy of which 
has been preserved in the British Museum. 



240 Mounds, Monuments , and Inscriptions. 

This war ended, however, in a treaty of peace 
between the Egyptians and Hittites as equal pow- 
ers. This treaty was written on a silver tablet, 
and has been recently discovered. It is the old- 
est known treaty between nations in the world, 
which has been preserved in its entirety, and is 
one of the most curious documents which has 
survived the lapse of ages, the names and titles of 
certain gods and goddesses being appended as wit- 
nesses of the treaty. This treaty was cemented by 
the marriage of Rameses and the daughter of the 
Hittite king, and the peace lasted many years. 

One of the most interesting and important facts 
regarding the Hittites is that Greek civilization 
owed much to this old race, and that the first be- 
ginnings of Greek culture were derived from the 
Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor. Inasmuch as 
we inherit our civilization from Greece, to a large 
extent, it becomes a very interesting fact when we 
discover that we can trace our own intellectual 
ancestry back, not simply to the Greeks, but to 
this old and forgotten empire. We now know 
that they came into close contact with the Greek 
races in the early period of their history, when 
the civilization of that wonderful people was being 
formed. Some of the greatest men of the earlier 
Greeks were born in Asia Minor, such as Homer, 
Thales, Pythagoras, and Herodotus; and whoever 
thinks of these in connection with the towns on the 
yEgean may cast his thoughts still further back to 
the Hittite civilization. 



A Lost Empire Recovered. 241 

After war with Egypt ceased, a long conflict be- 
gan between the Hittites and the Assyrians, which 
finally culminated in the complete overthrow of the 
Hittites by Sargon in 717 B.C. This was less than 
forty years after the founding of Rome, and a 
hundred and fifty years before the establishment * 
of the Persian empire by Cyrus. The Hittites 
had maintained themselves, with varying fortunes, 
during many hundreds of years; but after this 
they entirely disappear, though the last glimpse we 
have of them shows them with sword in hand, 
still proudly defying countless foes. But they 
have left their influence, which will be felt until 
the end of time. 

The Hittites were neither Aryans nor Semites, 
and the general opinion is that they were Tura- 
nians. Dr. William Hayes Ward says: "They 
belonged to that great primitive, or next to primi- 
tive, Mongolian stock, represented by Iberians 
and Basques in Europe, by the old Elamites and 
Sumerians of Media and Babylonia, and by suc- 
cessive waves of barbaric invasions, the last of 
which was seen in Europe when the Turks were 
repulsed from the walls of Vienna, and whose in- 
vasion in the times of the Huns left a terrible mem- 
ory. These Mongolian Hittites, speaking a bar- 
barous tongue, now probably quite lost, although 
Paul heard it in Lystra of Lycaonia, had their first 
home in the mountainous regions of Cappadocia, 
in central Asia Minor. They spread about, prob- 
ably eastward toward Armenia, certainly west- 
16 



242 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

ward to Lydia and the coast near Sardis, and 
south over Commagene, and over Mesopotamia as 
far south, at least, as the mouth of the Habor or 
Araxes River. ... At one time Nineveh was 
taken by them, and its gods carried captive. 
This was at least as far back as 1600 B.C. About 
this time they took all of Syria, and their southern 
capitals were Carchemish and Hamath. 

The Egyptian pictures show these Hittites to 
have been a short, stout race, with yellow skin, 
black hair, without beard, and with a retreating 
forehead. They also wore pigtails of a very Chi- 
nese appearance, with laced boots turned up at 
the toes, and even in their southern home they 
preserved the dress of the cold mountainous coun- 
try from which they had come. When all the 
buried cities of these strange and forgotten peo- 
ple are exhumed, we shall have a new chapter in 
the history of the world. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Scriptural Sites. 

Jacob's Well — Capernaum — Stone from Cana of Galilee — 
Tombs of Gadara — Ephesus — Recent Discoveries in Crete — 
Susa. 

Jacob's Well is one of the few places in Palestine 
concerning whose identity there is no dispute. It 
is about two miles east of Nablous, the ancient 
Shechem, and its site is acknowledged by Jews, 
Moslems, Samaritans, and Christians. There is 
no record of Jacob having dug a well, but the 
declaration in John iv. 6 is in accordance with 
universal tradition. The Samaritans, who have 
dwelt in that locality for about twenty-three hun- 
dred years, have never wavered in their conviction 
that this was the work of Jacob. The well is de- 
scribed as being close by Sychar, " near to the par- 
cel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph' ' 
(Gen. xlviii. 22), which he had bought from the 
children of Hamor. The well is about twelve feet 
in circumference and seventy feet deep, though it 
was undoubtedly much deeper originally, having 
been choked up by rubbish and debris. The en- 
trance to the well is about six feet below the level 
of the rubbish and dirt which have accumulated 
around it. It was first thoroughly examined in 
1S66 by Major Anderson, who made a descent into 
the well. " The mouth of the well," he sa}'s, " has 

(243) 



244 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

a narrow opening, just wide enough to allow the 
body of a man to pass through with arms uplifted ; 
and this narrow neck, which is about four feet 
long, opens into the well itself, which is cylindri- 
cally shaped, and about seven feet six inches in 
diameter. The mouth and upper part of the well 
are built of masonry, and the well appears to have 
been sunk through a mixture of alluvial soil and 
limestone fragments, till a compact bed of moun- 
tain limestone was reached, having horizontal 
strata which could easily be worked ; and the in- 
terior of the well presents the appearance of hav- 
ing been lined throughout with rough masonry." 
Around the stone opening of the well may still be 
felt the grooves caused by the ropes by which the 
waterpots Were drawn up. 

This well is a rain-water cistern, and not a well 
of living water. This agrees with the contrast in 
our Saviour's words to the woman of Sychar: 
"He would have given thee living water." 
Major Conder says that the well is cut through al- 
luvial soil and soft rock, receiving water by infil- 
tration through the sides. * 'There appears to be 
occasionally as much as two fathoms of water, but 
in summer the well is dry." 

There has been some controversy as to the 
identification of Capernaum, some contending that 
it is Tell Hum, on the northwestern shore of the 
Sea of Galilee, not far from the mouth of the Jor- 
dan, while Major Conder and others claim Khan 
Minyeh, about two and a half miles south of Tell 



Scriptural Sites. 245 

Hum, as the site. Strong Christian tradition from 
the sixth century onward has, however, fixed it at 
Tell Hum, and a number of modern authorities 
prefer this site. The size of the ruins, their posi- 
tion on the eastward road, and the invariable tra- 
dition of the Arabs and the Jews seem to confirm 
this theory. The name also seems to identify — 
Kefr-na-Hum (Capernaum) meaning the village 
of Hum. 

That, however, which is most interesting and 
important is the discovery of the ruins of a syna- 
gogue, amid the mass and debris of former build- 
ings. The entire surrounding wall of the syna- 
gogue was laid bare, and it was found to be better 
finished and more profusely ornamented than any 
which have been elsewhere examined. ' The walls, 
pavement, and a number of pedestals of columns 
were found in place, the walls being seventy- 
four feet nine inches long by fifty-six feet nine 
inches wide and ten feet thick. The roof had 
been supported by four rows of seven Corinthian 
pillars each, forming two double colonnades, with 
a rich cornice and frieze, of which many portions 
remain. Many pilasters were found, with Ionic 
capitals, and a number of stones, notched to re- 
ceive the wooden beams of the roof. A most re- 
markable fact is that in this synagogue alone were 
found, not only the black basalt of the country, 
but white limestone and marble, which must have 
been brought, at considerable cost, from a dis- 
tance. In no other synagogue do we find any 



246 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

foreign material employed. If Tell Hum is the 
site of ancient Capernaum, as so many indications 
seem to prove, then this was the synagogue built 
by the Roman centurion ; for there was probably 
only one synagogue in Capernaum, and it was 
there that our Lord delivered the discourse re- 
corded in John vi. 26-40. Another remarkable 
discovery is that the very lintel of the doorway of 
this synagogue has been found, and on it is 
carved a representation of the pot of manna, 
while it is ornamented with a flowing pattern of 
vine leaves and clusters of grapes. If this was in- 
deed the synagogue in which our Lord preached, 
we can imagine the Jews pointing to the lintel as 
they entered the synagogue and saying to Jesus: 
"Our fathers did eat manna in the desert. " And 
then followed our Lord's discourse which seemed 
to be based on that device. 

Recently in the French excavations at Elatea in 
Phocis, a very large flat stone about eight by two 
feet was found, with this inscription in Greek on 
it: "This is the stone from Cana of Galilee, 
where our Lord Jesus Christ made the water 
wine." The pilgrim Antoninus of Piacenza vis- 
ited Cana near the close of the sixth century, and 
states that he saw there two of the water jars in 
which our Lord changed the water into wine, and 
also the couch on which the Lord had reclined at 
the table. Antoninus, after the custom of pil- 
grims, reclined on this couch and wrote the names 
of his parents upon it, inscribing a prayer for 



Scriptural Sites. 247 

them. Part of the inscription still remains, 
scratched in faint letters on the upper surface. It 
is supposed that this great stone was carried to 
Elatea some time after the sixth century, prob- 
ably having been first taken to Constantinople, 
whither they were in the habit of carrying pre- 
cious relics from the Holy Land, and carried from 
thence to Elatea after the capture of Constantino- 
ple by the Latins. 

Dr. George Adam Smith, in his "Historical 
Geography of the Holy Land," gives an account 
of an interesting discovery made among the tombs 
of Gadara, which was a striking reminder of the 
healing of the demoniac as recorded in Mark v. 
1-9. Some peasants had dug up the gravestone 
of a Roman soldier, on which was inscribed his 
name, Publius (?) Aelius, and a statement that he 
had lived forty years, and served nineteen; but it 
also said that he was of a Legion, the fourteenth. 
"As I read this last detail," says Dr. Smith — 
"and the word is still stamped on other stones in 
the neighborhood — I realized how familiar that 
engine of foreign oppression had been to this 
region, so that the poor madman could find noth- 
ing fitter than it to describe the incubus upon his 
own life. 'My name is Legion,' he said, 'for we 
are many.' " 

Excavations at the famous city of Ephesus, .whose 
ruins had lain buried for many centuries, were be- 
gun in 1870, and many interesting discoveries have 
been made which are a striking commentary on the 



248 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

nineteenth chapter of Acts. Ephesus was one of 
the seven churches of Asia (Rev. ii. 1), and it fills 
an important place in the early history of Christian- 
ity. It was founded by Paul, cared for by Timo- 
thy, ministered to by John, and associated in sub- 
apostolic times with Polycarp, Ignatius, and Papias. 
At the time of Paul it was the most magnificent city 
of the Levant; the great emporium of Asia Minor; 
opulent and prosperous, celebrated no less for its 
commerce and the grandeur of its public buildings 
than for its voluptuousness and the refinements of 
its civilization. It was one of the cradles of Hel- 
lenic mythology, the metropolis of the Ionian con- 
federacy, a great school of art, and especially fa- 
mous as the seat of the worship of Diana. The 
great temple of Diana, 4 ' whom all Asia worshiped/' 
was one of the seven wonders of the world, and a 
fane whose magnificence was known throughout 
the earth. It was four hundred and twenty-jfive 
feet long and two hundred and twenty feet wide, 
being the largest of the Greek temples, and four 
times the size of the Parthenon at Athens. De- 
signed by Dinocrates, the architect of Alexandria, 
the temple standing in the time of Paul was the 
last of eight which stood on the same site ; and it 
remained till the city was sacked by the Goths in 
the third century, when the temple was burned. 
Many of its columns and ornaments were taken 
by Constantine and Justinian to adorn Christian 
churches. The immense dome of Saint Sophia at 
Constantinople rises from the columns of green jas- 



Scrifiural Sites, 249 

per which were once in this temple ; and two pillars 
in the great cathedral at Pisa were also transported 
thence. 

Ephesus is now a scene of complete desolation, 
and a miserable little Arab village is the only rep- 
resentative of the once illustrious and wealthy city. 
In 1870 the ruins of the great temple of Diana were 
discovered, after having been buried completely 
out of sight for centuries. The location of the walls 
can be traced, and the interior is a great mass of 
magnificent fluted columns, broken stones, gor- 
geous capitals, and ruined architraves, overgrown 
with thistles and rank weeds. The inscriptions 
found on these remains confirm the truthfulness of 
Luke's narrative in the nineteenth chapter of Acts. 
They tell of temples dedicated to the goddess whose 
image "fell down from Jupiter," of statues erected 
and altars consecrated to her. She is called the 
"great goddess Diana " in the Acts, and in the in- 
scriptions "the supremely great goddess Diana." 
The Roman proconsul, the " deputy " of Acts xix. 
38 (see Revised Version); the chief magistrate of 
the city, called "town clerk" (verse 35); and the 
Asiarchs (verse 31, margin of Revised Version), 
who had charge of the religious services offered to 
the Roman emperors, all appear again and again 
in the inscriptions. " Demetrius, the silversmith " 
(verse 24), has even been identified with a Deme- 
trius of the Ephesian tribe, named in an inscrip- 
tion, believed to date about the year 57 A.D. 

It was a custom in that idolatrous a^e to use 



250 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

portable images or shrines, which were little mod- 
els of the more celebrated images. A document 
has been discovered, dated 104 A.D., which tells 
of a bequest made by a Roman to the city of a cer- 
tain amount of money and of a number of statu- 
ettes of deities, particularly of Diana herself. In 
this inscription instructions are given as to how 
the statuettes are to be carried in procession from 
the temple at all public assemblies. This throws 
added light on verses 24 to 27. Another famous 
document has been found, dating from 160 A.D., 
which is a decree enjoining that the Ephesian 
month Artemisium was to be kept especially sa- 
cred to the goddess. The preamble, which has 
been restored by Canon Hicks, is almost a coun- 
terpart of verses 26, 27. It reads thus: "Where- 
as Artemis [Diana] , the goddess who presides over 
this our city, is set at naught, not only in her own 
native town, which she has made more glorious 
than all other cities by means of her own divinity, 
but also among Greeks and barbarians, so that in 
many places her sacrifices and honors have been 
neglected, and yet she is worthy herself to be set 
up and to have altars reared to her by reason of 
the evident manifestations she makes of her pres- 
ence. " 

In the thirty-fifth verse of the nineteenth chapter 
of Acts ( Revised Version ) , Ephesus is said to be the 
"temple-keeper of the great Diana. " The word 
veuKopos, thus translated, which was originally an ex- 
pression of humility and applied to the lowest men- 



Scriptural Sites. 251 

ials engaged in the care of the sacred edifice, be- 
came afterwards a title of the highest honor. It has 
been found on a number of Ephesian coins, one of 
the most noted bearing this inscription having also a 
representation of the temple and the portrait and 
name of Nero. 

Half a mile west of the ruins of the great temple 
of Diana are the remains of the vast theater where 
Demetrius and his companions so excited the mul- 
titude against Paul. It was an immense building, 
said to have been capable of holding fifty thousand 
people, and much of the great proscenium is still 
intact. Part of the walls are standing on the south 
side, and splendid columns, broken walls, and frag- 
ments of capitals and bases, all superbly carved 
and finished in the highest style of Greek art, lie 
in great piles where this splendid building once 
stood. 

Some very interesting finds have recently been 
made by two archaeologists, Mr. Evans and Mr. 
Hogarth, in the island of Crete, the modern Can- 
dia. This island is in the Mediterranean, sixty 
miles to the south of Greece, and its original in- 
habitants were a kindred race with those of Asia 
Minor, called Cherethites, mentioned in 1 Samuel 
xxx. 14, and in Ezekiel xxv. 16. In excavating 
the city of Cnossus, the residence of Minos, the 
king around whom so many legends cluster, and 
whom critics have long claimed was wholly a myth- 
ical character, these explorers found the palace 
and labyrinth of Minos, dated 1400 B.C., with bril- 



252 Mounds, Monuments , and Inscriptions, 

liant frescoes and figures surpassing anything pre- 
viously discovered, together with a great number 
of clay globes and crescents inscribed with cunei- 
form characters, different, however, from the Bab- 
ylonian writings. They have not yet been able to 
decipher this Mycenaean writing, though these Cre- 
tan discoveries are believed to be of very great im- 
portance. Professor Sayce's theory is that the 
Philistines descended from this race of Minos, and 
that Caphtor, from which the Scriptures say they 
came (Amos ix. 7; Jer. xlvii. 4), was a part of 
Crete. 

Recent excavations amid the ruins of the city of 
Susa have yielded some exceedingly interesting re- 
sults, and archaeologists are beginning to believe 
that this was one of the oldest cities of the world. 
It originally belonged to the empire of Elam, 
founded by the oldest son of Shem, the son of 
Noah (Gen. x. 22). This city is mentioned in 
Daniel, Nehemiah, and Esther, but it is of special 
interest as connected with the romantic history of 
Queen Esther. 

The first excavations were made in 1852 by W. 
K. Loftus, an Englishman, who found under the 
mounds the substructure of a large edifice, a num- 
ber of columns, and a group of trilingual cunei- 
form inscriptions on the bases of the columns. 
But the most interesting discoveries were made in 
1885 by E. Dieulafoy, a French engineer and ar- 
chitect, who was accompanied by his wife, and 
who identified the palace of Ahasuerus, or Xerxes. 



Scriftziral Sites, 253 

What is called the palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon 
is the restored palace of Xerxes, composed of 
three groups of distinct apartments. 

M. Dieulafoy brought a large number of antiq- 
uities to Paris and placed them in two large rooms 
of the Louvre. From these he has made a model 
of the great palace of Artaxerxes, and " the king's 
gate," where Mordecai so worried Haman, can 
now be identified, as well as "the inner court of 
the king's house" (Esther v. 1), where Esther ap- 
peared unbidden before the king; and "the out- 
ward court of the king's house," where Haman 
came to ask for the hanging of Mordecai (vi. 4). 

One of the most interesting of M. Dieulafoy's 
"finds" was the royal seal of the Akhoemenian 
kings, a valuable gray, opal-like stone, conical- 
shaped. Two sphinxes guarded the royal medal- 
lion, showing by their Egyptian character that this 
seal could only have been adopted after the con- 
quest of Egypt. Within the winged disk, hover- 
ing above the royal effigy, is an imitation of the 
Assyrian Asshur symbol. This symbol has been 
found reproduced on all their monuments, palaces, 
and tombs. v 

Some later discoveries have been made by M. 
Jacques de Morgan, who has dug down through 
forty feet of ruins, disclosing palace built upon 
palace. He went down through the cities of the 
Greek, Persian, and Babylonian periods, until he 
reached what is called the Anzanite city. About 
six feet below the level of the deepest Greco- 



254 Mounds, Monuments, and Inscriptions. 

Persian foundations, he began to strike massive 
walls of sun-dried brick made of fine yellow clay 
worked with chopped straw. The composition is 
similar to the building material still in use in Per- 
sia and Arabia. In one of the shafts M. de Morgan 
found an alabaster vase bearing an inscription with 
the name of Xerxes, which was the first text of this 
king found in Susa. 

M. de Morgan also found a stele of King Naram- 
Sin, the son of the famous Sargon, of Assyria, who 
lived 3800 B.C., and who here records a victory 
over the Elamites. At the top of this stele are 
three singular representations of the sun with its 
rays. Below is the gigantic helmeted king, armed 
with an arrow in the right hand, a bow in the left 
hand, and wearing a semi-long costume and san- 
dals, with a dagger in his belt. His beard is long, 
according to the Chaldean and Assyrian fashion. 
He treads under his feet dead enemies, while in 
front of him another one falls wounded and at- 
tempts to pull out the arrow which pierces him. 

In the brief outline given in these pages of the 
marvelous discoveries of recent years, we have 
only opened the way for fuller investigation. The 
triumphs of the spade and the pick promise to con- 
tinue, and no one can tell how broad will be the 
horizon of the future. All these discoveries are so 
many commentaries upon God's word, not only 
vindicating its historical accuracy, but throwing a 
flood of light on many obscure passages which we 
were not able previously to understand. Many 



Scriptural Sites. 255 

names, for example, in that strange tenth chapter 
of Genesis, which meant nothing to us, and which 
we were scarcely able to pronounce, we have found 
inscribed on monuments, tablets, walls, and foun- 
dation stones, and to our amazement they prove to 
be the names of cities, empires, and races of that 
old buried and forgotten world, which goes ages 
beyond what we thought a few years ago was cor- 
rect chronology. Before 1870 there were six hun- 
dred and twenty-two places mentioned in the Old 
Testament as located west of the Jordan. Of 
these, more than half could not be identified; but 
the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund has 
succeeded, by their own statements, in identifying 
one hundred and seventy-two more of these local- 
ities. Thus we are learning in every way to know 
the Bible better, and to have a broader, deeper, 
truer faith in its revelation of God and in its record 
of God's dealing with man. These treasures have 
been wisely and providentially hidden during all 
these centuries, to be revealed at the very period 
when they were most needed. They have come 
from mound and tomb to testify to the accuracy of 
scriptural statements. The Bible history stands 
to-day upon the firmest and clearest foundation. 
Other things may pass away, and "much of what 
we call science and philosophy may be displaced, 
but the Word of God and he that doeth the will of 
God abide forever. 



SCRIPTURE REFERENCES. 



Genesis. 



i. 14 H 

i. 18 14 

i. 20, 21 15 

i. 26 15 



11.2,3. 



16 

ii. 8-14 20 

ii. 21, 22 15 

iii. 1-6 21 

iii. 24 20 

iv. 14 39 

iv. 16 38 

iv. 17 , 39 

iv. 21 39 

iv. 22 40 

vi. 7, 8 23-30 

x. 6 60 

x. 10 39.44.45 

x. 11 5 6 ,7 X 

x. 15 2 34 

X. 22 252 

xi. 2 43 

xi. 2-7 30 

xi. 8 121 

xi. 31 49 

xii.5 4 8 

xii. 16 126 

xiv. 1,2 47, 50, 56 

xiv. 18 54 

xv. 20 234 

xxii. 2 209 

xxiii. 3-18 234 

xxvi. 34,35 235 

xxxiii. 19 243 

17 



PAGE 

xxxix. 1 128 

xxxix. 7-20 125 

xl. ii, 16, 17 128 

xli. 1 129 

xli. 14 172 

xli. 18-24 172 

xli. 42. 172 

xli. 45 128 

xli. 46 130 

xli, 48, 49 129 

xli. 54 130 

xlvi. 29 168, 169, 173 

xlvi. 34 127 

xlvii. 6 132 

xlvii. 20, 26 131 

xlviii. 22 243 

Exodus. 

i. 8 107 

i. 10 136 

i. 10-22 148 

»• 11 137 

i. 13. J 4 J 34> *39 

ii. 10 142 

ii. 23 136, 140 

iii. 7, 8 140 

v. 1-18 140 

vii. 15-21 150 

viii. 2-6 151 

viii. 17 152 

viii. 20 ,. 154 

ix. 3 x 55 

ix. 23-25 157 

x. 13-15 *57 

x. 21-23 158 

xii. 29 159 

(257) 



258 



Scripture References. 



Leviticus. 



xxvi. 31-34. 



PAGE 
. 206 



Numbers. 

xxxii. 34 100 

xxxiii. 4 1 56 

Deuteronomy. 

xi. 10, 12 203 

xvi. 9-16 17 

xxviii. 12 70 

Joshua. 

vii. 21 48 

x. 5.32 109 

Judges. 
i. 11 105 



1 Samuel. 



v. 11,12 

vi^b 5 

xxx. 14 



... 96 

... 85 
... 85 

. . 251 



2 Samuel. 



v - 7 232 

xi. 3 235 

xxiv. 15 160 

xxiv. 16-25 209 

1 Kings. 

iii. 1 166 

v. 18 211, 215 

vi. 7 210, 218 

x - 29 235 

xi - l 235 

xi. 40 166 

xiv. 25, 26 167 

xx. 1,2.. 77 



2 Kings. 



»»4i 5- 

vii. 6 . . , 



v»». 15 

x. 34 

xi. 14 

xiv. 25 

xv. 19 

xv. 29,30 

xvi. 9 

xvii. 6, 7, 24. 

xviii 

xviii. 14 

xix 



PAGE 
.. 98 

• 235 

•• 77 
•• 79 

• 183 
•• 93 

.. 80 
.. 81 

.. 82 
.. 84 

..85 
.. 87 
.. 85 



xix. 35 87 

xix. 37 89 

xx. 20 230 

xxiii. 29 60 

xxv. 27 66 

1 Chronicles. 

iv. 14, 21, 23 174 

2 Chronicles. 

ix. 25 212 

xi. 9 109 

xii. 2-9 167 

xxxii 85 

xxxii. 9 109 

xxxii. 30 230 

xxxiii. 11 90 

xxxvi. 11-20 176 



Ezra. 



i. 1-3. 



72 



Nehemiah. 



256 
209 



Scripture References. 



259 



Esther. 



v. 1. . 
vi. 4 . 



PAGE 

• 257 

• 257 



Psalms. 



u-9 215 

xlvi. 4 227 

lxxviii. 12 143 

lxxviii. 43 146 

lxxviii. 50 160 

cxviii. 22 213 

Isaiah. 

viii. 6 231 

xii. 3 227 

xix. 18 .... . 171 

xx. 1. 83 

xxi. 1-10 67 

xxviii. 16 «. 212 

xxx. 14 216 

xxxvi 80, 85 

xxxvi. 2, 1 2, 22 80 

xxxvii 80, 85 

xxxix. 1 80 

Jeremiah. 

xix. 11 216 

xxxii. 14 193 

xxxix. 1-7 177 

xli. 17 177 

xlii 178 

xliii. 8-1 1 64, 179 

xliv. 30 66, 178 

xlvii. 4 252 

li. 58 216 



Ezekiel. 



i. 1-13 . 
iii.15. 

v. 5--. 



• 47 

• 47 
200 



PAGE 

x - 1 S 47 

xvi. 3 107,235 

xxv. 16 251 

xxvii. 18 66 

xxix. 19 65 

xxx. 17 168 

Daniel. 

iv. 30 64 

v. 1-6 70 

v. 16 70 

v. 30 72 

viii. 2 252 

x "- 3 55 

Amos. 

ix. 7 252 

Jonah. 

Mi 2 93 

»• J 7 95 

iii. 4-6 9S 

iv. 11 97 

Haggai. 

i. 12 216 

ii. 23 216 

Matthew. 

iv. 5, 6 212 

v. 14 192 

vii. 5 191 

xii. 10 17 

xii. 39, 40 93 

xlii. 57 J 92 

xvi. 17 9S 

xviii. 17 195 

xxi. 42 213 

Mark. 

v- 1-9 • 247 

vi-4 ••, • l 9* 



260 



iv. 24 

vi.42 .... 

v».5 

xi. 29-32 , 
xix. S.... 



Scripture References. 



Luke. 



PAGE 
. 192 

. 246 

•• 93 
. 196 



John. 

i. 42 98 

ii. 1-9 246 

ii. 14-16 222 

iv. 6 243 

iv. 10 244 

iv. 44 x 92 

v. 2-9 223 

vi. 26-40 246 

ix. 7 227 

xxi. 15 9S 

xxi. 25 191 



Acts. 



iv. 11 

vii. 20, 22 , 

xvii. 26 

xix. 27 249, 

xix. 29 

xix. 35 249, 

1 Corinthians. 
iii. 10, 11 



PAGE 

214 

145 

124 

,250 

250 

250 



Ephesians. 
ii. 12, 14, 20, 21 213, 

1 Peter. 



i.6. 



Revelation. 



213 



247 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE 

Aaron 174 

Abraham 48, 126 

Accadians 37 

Acts of St. Paul 185 

Adad-Nirari III 79 

Ahab 77 

Alphabet, origin of 103 

Amenophis IV 105 

Antonia, tower of 210 

Apepi, the Pharaoh of Jo- 
seph 169 

Arioch 51 

Assur-banipal 90 

Assur-banipal's library. . . 12 
Assyria 56, 71 

Babel, tower of 30 

Babylon and her people. .56, 61 

Behistun Rock 7 

Belshazzar 69 

Ben-hadad 77 

Berosus 23, 96 

Bethesda, Pool of 223 

Borsippa 30 

Brick-making in Egypt. 136, 140 
Bubastis 168 

Cain 38 

Cana of Galilee 246 

Canal of Joseph 189 

Capernaum 245 

Castle of the Jew's Daugh- 
ter 176 



PAGE 

Cats, worshiped at Bubas- 
tis 168 

Chariots in Egypt 173 

Chedorlaomer 50 

Cherubim 20 

Chimham 178 

Constantine 208 

Corner stone of the temple 

wall «. 213 

Coronation stone in West- 
minster Abbey 183 

Court of the Gentiles 221 

Creation tablets 12 

Crete, discoveries in 251 

Cuneiform inscriptions... 5 
Cyrus 66 

Dagon 95 

Daphne 178 

Darkness, plague of 158 

Death of the firstborn of 

Egypt 159 

Diana, Temple of 249 

Edingirangin 44 

Egibi, banking house of . . 72 
Egypt in the time of Jo- 
seph 125 

Egyptian aborigines 118 

Egyptian alphabet 103 

Egyptian civilization 1 1 1 

Egyptian hieroglyphics... 103 

Enoch, Book of 193 

(261) 



262 



Topical Index. 



PAGE 

Ephesus 248 

Epistles of Clement of 

Rome 188 

Erech 47 

Esar-haddon 20, 90 

Euphrates, river of 62 

Evil-merodach 66 

Exodus of the Hebrews., no 

Fall of man 21 

Fall of Nineveh 92 

Famine in Egypt 130 

t First civilized race 37 

Flies, plague of 154 

Flood 23 

Frogs, plague of 151 

Gadarenes 247 

Garden of Eden 13 

Goshen, land of 132 

Greek civilization 240 

Grenfell and Hunt, discov- 
eries by 187 

Hadrian 208 

Haggai's seal 216 

Haran 51 

Harris papyrus 165, 174 

Hcliopolis 145 

Herod's temple 219 

Hezekiah 85, 231 

Hill of the Jews 169 

Hiram, king of Tyre 211 

Hittites 233 

Hophra 178 

Hoshea....' 81 

Hyksos, or Shepherd 
Kings 127 



PAGE 

Inn at Bethlehem 177 

Israelites, inscriptions on 
Egyptian monument 147 

Jacob-el 174 

Jacob's Well 243 

Jehoiachin 66 

Jehu 76 

Jeremiah 176 

Jeroboam 166 

Jerusalem 207 

Jewelry, earliest known.. 117 

Jonah 93 

Joseph 126 

Joseph-el 174 

Khammurabi ',. .53, 56 

Khu-n-Aten 104 

Kirjath-sepher 105 

Kuyunjik 12 

Kutha, library of 13 

Lachish 87, 109 

Lice, plague of 152 

Locusts, plague of 157 

Logia, or Sayings of our 

Lord 191 

Machpelah, cave of 234 

Matthew, Gospel of 188 

Melchizedek 54 

Menephtah 146 

Menes, tomb of 115 

Mesha, king of Moab 98 

Moabite Stone 98 

Mohar, travels of 144 

Moses. 142,145 

Murrain of cattle 155 



Toxical Index. 



263 



Nabonidtis 45, 66 

Nabopolassar 60 

Napoleon 203 

Naram-Sin 45, 258 

Nebuchadrezzar 61, 176 

Neby-Yunus 99 

Negada 114 

Nineveh 12, 74 

Nippur 45 

Obelisk, black, of Shal- 

maneser 78 

On 145 

Onias 170 

Orion, city of 170 

Oxyrhynchus 187 

Palestine 48, 197 

Papias 191 

Pekah 81 

Persepolis 5,6 

Peter, Gospel of 194 

Pithom, discovery of its 

site 137 

Plagues of Egypt 146, 149 

Pompeia, the Roman lady 

healed at Bethesda 226 

Pool of Siloam 227 

Pottery, Phoenician 215 

Pots with Egyptian papyri. 193 

Ptolemy Philadelphus 193 

Publicans 193 

Quarries under Jerusalem. 216 

Rainer's papyri. . 185 

Rameses 1 135 

Rameses II 136 



PAGE 

Rameses II., mummy of. . 141 

Rameses III 165 

Rassam, Hormuzd 12, 23 

Red Sea, passage through. 162 

Rosetta Stone 4 

Royal quarries 216 

Sabbath 16 

Sacred Stone of Scone. . . 183 

Saracus 91 

Sardanapalus 91 

Sargon I 41,45,57 

Sargon II 83, 241 

Sayings of our Lord .. 191 

Scarabasus, sacred symbol 

of Egypt 155 

Scheil, Pere, the discover- 
er of the old flood tab- 
lets 28 

Sennacherib 82 

Seti 1 135 

Seti II 160 

Shalmaneser II yy 

Shalmaneser IV 84 

Shishak, king of Egypt. . . 166 

Signet ring 172 

Siloam inscription 228 

Siloam, Pool of 227 

Sippara, city of 30 

Solomon's stables 212 

Solomon's temple 209 

Susa 252 

Synagogue at Capernaum. 246 
Syriac Gospels 185 

Tahpanhes 178 

Tanis 148 



264 



Topical Index. 



PAGE 

Teaching of the twelve 
apostles 187 

Tel-el-Amarna tablets. .53>.i°4 
% Tel Hum 245 

Tello 40 

Temple of Solomon, foun- 
dations 210 

Thunder and lightning, 
seventh plague of Egypt 157 

Tiglath-pileser 80 

Treaty between Egyptians 
and HittUcs 240 



TAOE 

Ur of the Chaldees 49, 5 1 

Urukagina, king of Sir- 

gulla 44 

Uruld 49 

Via Dolorosa 209 

Virgin's Fountain 22y 

Vulture stele 44 

Zaccheus 196 

Zedekiah 170 

Zoan 5, 143 



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